Five Reasons Why 
Methodists Don't 
Dance 

BY 

REV . FRANKLIN F. LEWIS 

A. M. ( Harvard ) S. T. B. ( Boston) 

With An Introduction By 

^REV. JOHN ROACH STRATON, D. D. 
Pastor Calvary Baptist Church 
New York City 

Thirty-five Cents 

PUBLISHED BY 

THE GLAD TIDINGS PUBLISHING CO. 

202 SO. CLARK ST. CHICAGO, ILL 









Five Reasons Why 
Methodists Don't 
Dance 


BY 


REV. FRANKLIN F. LEWIS 

• < 

A. Af. ( Harvard ) S. T. B. (Boston) 


With An Introduction By 

REV. JOHN ROACH STRATON , D. D. 
Pastor Calvary Baptist Church 

New York City 


Thirty-five Cents 

PUBLISHED BY 

THE GLAD TIDINGS PUBLISHING CO. 


202 SO. CLARK ST. 


CHICAGO, ILL 









COPYRIGHT L921 BY 
REV. FRANKLIN F. LEWIS 



©CLA617497 


•fts 

u 



Foreword 

This sermon was preached at a regular morning 
service of the Cargill Memorial Methodist Episcopal 
Church. The occasion which led to its delivery is 
amply explained in the first few paragraphs. The 
problem it confronts, however, is not at all local. 
Similar conditions are to be found in practically 
every section of the country. 

With the exception of a few quotations and foot 
notes, the message is here as it “came from the heart 
and lips of a preacher on his feet.” The stenog¬ 
rapher’s report has been revised, and some of the 
authorities quoted more at length than was possible 
at the time, but the subject matter and the form of ex¬ 
pression are left largely as they were delivered. 

That it should be in book form is a second thought. 
A stenographer was asked to take the address to as¬ 
sure an accurate report by the Public Press. It was 
only after “the community was stirred as it had not 
been for a generation by a single sermon,” that a de¬ 
mand for its publication was heeded. 

As could be expected many letters were printed in 
the daily papers, condemning the preacher for his 
utterances. On the other hand, many were printed 
commending him for the positions taken. Among 
other things sent to the author directly was a “black 
hand letter” threatening his life. 

Another factor entering into its publication is the 
generous offer of one of our local laymen to distribute 
gratuitously five hundred copies. This man “right¬ 
eous before God,” and therefore “full of good works” 
heads our Centenary list with the largest contribution. 

With the hope that the message may be helpful to 
ministers as they confront the rising tides of worldli¬ 
ness, and to parents and young people who may de- 

a 


FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON'T DANCE 


sire some recent statement of the “Reasons Why 
Methodists Don’t Dance,” it is sent forth. 

FRANKLIN F. LEWIS. 

Janesville, Wisconsin. 

Very heartily do I endorse and commend this little 
hook. I am for any man who hits the modern dance 
with any sort of weapon. While cast in popular 
form, this discussion cannot but be convincing to 
any fair-minded and any receptive heart. 

Every great civilization of the past has decayed 
first and fastest at the point of a wrong relationship 
between the sexes. The danger signals for our age 
are now out, and these corrupt dances are the most 
menacing, because the most plausible and insidious, 
of the harmful forces of the times. 

We no longer have the simple and stately dances 
of a former day, and we do not enter here into a 
discussion as to whether they had a place or whether 
they were right; but beyond any question the dances 
of this day are an expression of degeneration in hu 
man society. These dances take their very names 
and movements from the lower animals, and the amaz¬ 
ing thing about it is, that there seems to be so little 
conscience on this question among Christian people. 

Well does that thoughtful and highly talented Eng¬ 
lishman, Harold Begbie, in his book, “The Crisis of 
Morals,” exclaim: “Think what it means that these 
filthy and lascivious dances are tolerated in private 
houses and that they are laughed at and caricatured 
in the newspapers as though they were merely an 
absurdity of fashion.” 

When one thinks quietly and dispassionately about 
the matter it is difficult to see what the difference is 
between a man hugging a woman sitting on a sofa 
or hugging her whirling on the dance floor. And if 
there is any choice of evils between the two things, 
does not the greater danger lie in the dance, because 
there are whole of the two bodies—male and female 


4 



FOREWORD 


—are in closer contact, and the sexual impulses are 
more deeply stirred and stimulated by sensuous music 
and rhythmical motion? 

A fossilized octogenarian, or a self-complacent 
mollycoddle with ice water in his veins may be able 
in the dance to hold in his arms a throbbing, beauti¬ 
ful young woman with almost half her body exposed, 
and the other half clothed largely with good inten¬ 
tions—such a man, I say, under these circumstances 
may maintain a philosophical calm, but any young 
fellow with red blood in his veins and the elemental 
forces of nature operating in him, cannot so easily do 
so. 

The modern dance is of the devil. It is altogether 
bad, and I bid this little book, which attacks it, God¬ 
speed ! 

(Signed) 

JOHN ROACH STRATON. 
Pastor Calvary Baptist Church, 

New York City. 




' 












Five Reasons Why 
Methodists Don’t Dance 

I have announced, my friends, to speak this morn¬ 
ing, on the subject: “Five Reasons Why Methodists 
Don’t Dance.” 

Those of you who are not Methodists, who may 
be members of other Churches, or members of no 
Church for that matter, who have come to hear what 
I have to say, do me an honor in coming to hear me 
speak on this subject; and if I shall say some things 
that may be unpleasant for you to hear, I hope you 
will consider that they are unpleasant for me to say. 
I shrink from saying some things that I shall have to 
say, but in order to deal adequately with the question 
in hand, we must talk to the subject and not about 
something else. We must go to the vital things con¬ 
cerned. Like a surgeon who may be cutting a cancer 
out of the vitals of his patient, it is unpleasant for 
him as well as the person who is being treated for the 
deadly malady. 

I wish further to say that this subject is no hobby 
of mine. I have been preaching now in the regular 
ministry for twelve years and this is the first time I 
have ever spent an entire morning or evening service 
speaking upon the subject. I have referred to it at 
various times in sermons as the question may have 
arisen in connection with some related theme, but 
I have never delivered an address or sermon on this 
particular subject since I havB been in the regular 
ministry. 

I did speak directly upon it while I was preaching 
as a Student Pastor at Broad Ripple, Indiana, where 
there was a pleasure resort park out side the city of 
Indianapolis, and where dancing was running full 
blast not only every night in the week during the 
Summer months, but was in full swing all day on 
Sunday and all night Sunday night, and where I felt 

7 


FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


I was in a situation that demanded I say something 
about the dance, and thus raise a note of warning 
against its allurements in that particular place. I 
usually went to this suburb on Saturday evening 
direct from the University where I was a student, 
and was entertained by some of the good people of 
the Church. One Saturday night I stayed at a physi¬ 
cian’s home and retiring early slept undisturbed until 
morning. At the breakfast table the next morning this 
doctor asked me how I had rested during the night. 
After assuring him that I had slept well, I asked him 
how he had fared. Whereupon he informed me that 
shortly after he retired he was called to attend a 
young woman nineteen years old who had come out 
from the city to one of the dance halls and resorts 
at the park, who after dancing half the night had 
become drunken and enraged by drink, and he had 
spent the entire night there working with her to save 
her life. 

Here I was, arising refreshed to preach the Gospel 
to cloistered folks when at our very doors doctors 
were spending the entire night over young women 
debauched by the pleasure Casinos. This will at least 
explain why I spoke upon Dancing at that particular 
place. Then as now, I have always sought to speak 
upon things of vital interest to the people, and not 
side step any subject because it might chance to be 
unpopular. And while I have not spoken upon the 
subject since, it is by no means that I have changed 
my mind, or that the dance has in any essential fea¬ 
ture been reformed. It is simply because I have 
never been where it was running at loose ends as 
it was there, and is in Janesville today. The rea¬ 
son I arise to speak upon the subject in your city 
today is the very fact that it has a new lease upon 
life, and is appealing for the patronage of our young 
people inside and outside the Church, as it has not 
done in many, many years. It has gotten under 
such headway that it is almost impossible for parents 
who know what the dance is to hold their boys and 

8 



INTRODUCTION 


girls from its lure. Aphrodite, the goddess of passion 
and lust, has been resurrected, and many Christians 
are worshiping at her shrine. The young man who 
doesn’t dance is looked upon by many as being either 
string haltered or ruptured. And when it comes to 
a battle between public sentiment on the one hand 
and ideals on the other, sentiment usually wins out. 

I find likewise it has invaded sacred precincts as 
has not been the case in many years. Colleges and 
schools which have stood out against it have caved in, 
and today think they know more than their founders 
about morals as well as electricity. It is to be hoped 
they do, as morals and religion should be progressive 
as well as Science, but it will be well to remember 
that the primary things in morals have been worked 
out centuries ago, like the discovery of the Mariner’s 
Compass, and can never be discovered again or im¬ 
proved upon. Their application to life may be new 
and more generally known and observed, but the Ten 
Commandments will never be superseded. The fact 
is, human society shows lapses as well as strides 
forward. That the ban has been lifted on certain so¬ 
cial sins may but indicate a moral lapse rather than 
moral progress. 

To prove to you that this lapse has taken place, or 
at least these time honored positions are being aban¬ 
doned, let me refer you to a recent circular sent out by 
Grinnell College. This as you know is one of the 
most noted and splendidly equipped colleges in the 
west, founded by sturdy Congregationalists. 

Here is what this circular says: 

“SOME TRADITIONS” 

“Grinnell College has traditional school customs 
which are interesting and lend an air of individuality 
to the school. Two of the most noteworthy are those 
regarding dancing and smoking. The wooing of 
Lady Nicotine is and always has been taboo within 
the sacred precincts of the campus proper. The 
dancing tradition, or custom, however has been modi- 

9 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


fied in later years. Originally dancing was ‘bad form’ 
at any time or place during the college residence. 
But nowadays there are three or four times a year 
when the entire college, faculty and all, get together 
and have grand, comprehensive, satisfying hops.” 

The question at once arises in one’s mind, why don’t 
they let in “Lady Nicotine” as well as Lady Aphro¬ 
dite. During the recent war the Red Cross adminis¬ 
tered an anesthetic to Miss Nicotine and seemingly 
extracted her dangerous fangs. Army chaplains and 
Y. M. C. A. leaders who still held “Lady Aphro¬ 
dite” corrupt and taboo passed “Lady Nicotine” 
through the lines. “Bad form,” you say. Yes, it 
would be “bad form” to have college girls twisting 
their lips about cigars or rolling cigarettes in their 
dainty fingers, but when the moss backed, sedate, 
dignified College Faculty gets together in “Grand, 
comprehensive, satisfying hops,” “bad form” hustles 
out the back door and “Lady Aphrodite,” nimble 
and nude, walks in at the front door. 

The Church likewise has shown a tendency to cave 
in,* and if not sanctioning the dance, is making no con¬ 
certed battle against it. The time honored position of 
of the church with reference to the dance is well 
known. Practically every Church, Protestant and 
Catholic has opposed it. But we are “pussyfooting” 

*“In the face of these terrible conditions, that ought to 
be known to all intelligent leaders of the moral life of the 
community, we have the fact that many Churches are now 
holding dances in their buildings. I have here, for example, 
pamphlets announcing dances in a famous Baptist Church 
on Manhattan Island, and Churches of other denominations 
are holding dances constantly in their own buildings and even 

in down town hotels.-A short time ago the wife of one 

of our preachers danced all night long. This dance must 
have been with other men, because surely an ‘advanced’ and 
‘liberal’ parson would not yet go the limit of himself attend¬ 
ing a ball and dancing.” 

“The Menace of Immortality in Church and State,” pages 
32 - 33 . 

By Rev. John R. Straton. 


10 


- 



INTRODUCTION 


around, trying to hoid our own, and all the while the 
lecherous hand of the dancing master is reaching into 
our Sunday Schools and young peoples’ societies and 
lugging off the very hope of the future Church. The 
dance has broken loose like a craze in our cities and 
is sweeping the country as it has not done since the 
days following the civil war. The Church is being 
caught in its licentious embrace. And this is another 
reason I am speaking upon it today. 

When you work your head off in a five weeks’ 
revival effort, preaching, singing, visiting, trying by 
every means to get people to forsake their sins and 
unite with the Church of Jesus Christ, and then go 
from that revival meeting to the halls of the city 
and there find women who are members of the church 
whirling around in the arms of men not their hus¬ 
bands, and find men who should be interested in the 
salvation of the w^orld hugging other men’s wives 
in public, isn’t it time that somebody wake up? Then 
when you have women who have charge of the little 
girls of your Church, rallying them on week days in 
an attempt to teach them religion and Christ’s pro¬ 
gramme for their lives and the world, tell you that 
mothers have said, “My girls can come to the Chil¬ 
dren’s meetings if you will put the meeting at a time 
when it will not interfere with their dancing lessons,” 
isn’t it getting time, again I say, for somebody not 
only to wake up but to get up? 

One other thing I will mention as a back ground 
for my remarks. I have been preaching in your city 
now going on five years, and during that time I 
have attended many meetings apart from regular 
Church services. I have been in patriotic meetings; 
I have attended concerts; I have attended union meet¬ 
ings of the Churches; in fact I have been at almost 
every sort of gathering of a cultural, educational, or 
religious nature w 7 here the public are invited or privi¬ 
leged to attend, and I can say this: I have seen on the 
dance floor in your city between the hours of twelve 
and one o’clock more young men and young women 

11 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five than I 
have ever seen at any one meeting I have attended. 
Now doesn’t this mean something? Shouldn’t it 
mean something to you as giving you a line on the 
tendency of the times? Whatever you may believe 
about what I may have to say, this at least ought to 
provoke you to thoughtful consideration. Degenerate 
and jaded Nero may fiddle while Rome burns, but for 
you to fiddle while your own house is on fire is not 
only folly, it’s crime. 

I should say further, to disabuse anybody’s mind of 
the feeling that I am prejudiced, that I have been 
raised in a “straight jacket,” that I have been brought 
up in the Sunday School and the Church, and do not 
know anything else, and don’t know what the dance is; 
I will say in reference to this, that I know what the 
dance is. I have been close enough to see it carried 
on in my own father’s house with my own uncle 
furnishing the music with his violin; and through 
the years, since I have been in the ministry, and be¬ 
fore, while I was in college, I have seen the dance and 
know what it is. I have seen it in Europe from Na¬ 
ples to Liverpool; in Belgium, France, Italy, Switzer¬ 
land, Germany and Scotland. I have seen it in 
America from Boston to San Francisco, out doors and 
in doors, and I have seen it at its best and have seen 
it at its worst. I have witnessed it in what you would 
call “good form”, and what you would call “bad 
form,” and I believe I can say that so far as my being 
prejudiced against the subject is concerned, I may 
claim to be at least as free from prejudice as anybody 
who may oppose it. After I have said that, you will 
still insist I am prejudiced. Well, for that matter, 
no one could open his mouth to speak on any subject 
from breakfast food to Peace Treaties but that some¬ 
body will arise to say he is prejudiced. The fact is 
when a person has no argument to produce himself 
he always hides behind the threadbare theory of 
prejudice. I therefore, beg of you to be as open 
minded and free from prejudice in favor of the 

12 



IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


subject as you ask me to be open minded and free 
from prejudice against it. One thing at least I am 
sure you will grant me, a sincerity of purpose and 
courage which compel me to denounce a custom so 
generally indulged as the modern dance and 
denounce it in language I shall needs use, however 
much I may personally dislike it. 

Now I have promised you, “Five Reasons Why 
Methodists Don’t Dance.” I, therefore, proceed to 
state them, and to give to you the position of the 
most victorious branch of the Church of Christ since 
Apostolic days. Since the Methodist Church has not 
been an ambulance corps, but an army of crusaders to 
conquer the world, the flesh and the devil, it has 
fought the dance to the last ditch. The first indict¬ 
ment we bring against the dance is: 

I. IT VITIATES THE RELIGIOUS AND SPIRIT¬ 
UAL LIFE. 

If this is true, this ought to be all that is neces¬ 
sary to say to religious people. People who take 
Christ as their Lord and Savior and unite with His 
Church to bring the world to God should be anx¬ 
ious to shun every form of sin, both of the flesh 
and spirit, that invades the sacred precincts of the 
soul and vitiates their spiritual life. The dance 
has been condemned by the most spiritually minded 
men and women of the Church from the earliest 
times as being not only harmful but fatal to the 
Christian life. Tertullian, one of the early Church 
Fathers, said: “If Christians were found in the 
assemblies of the dancers, it proved them to be no 
longer true Christians.” This was uttered at a time 
in the Empire when Rome was rotten to the very 
heart, and yet was so insensible of her condition, 
she was boasting herself as Mistress of the World. 
The Church saved itself from the fate of the Roman 
Empire because it refused while in Rome to do as 
Rome did. If the Church ever falls it will be when 

13 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


she boasts herself as the Mistress of Spiritual Lead¬ 
ership of the World, while at her heart she is worldly 
and insensible of her real apostacy and doesn’t 
know that God Almighty has written “Ichabod” 
over her portals, and spewed her out of His mouth. 

Some times people try to prove that dancing is 
alright by the Bible. “They danced in the Bible 
times. David danced,” they say. Well, the Bible 
is like a fiddle, you can play any kind of a tune on 
it you wish, if you have the ingenuity. Nearly 
every form of vice and social evil have been de¬ 
fended from the Scriptures. You can pull things out 
of their relation here and there and prove most 
anything by the Bible. This is especially true of 
the Old Testament. Slavery was intrenched for 
centuries in Christian lands because they proved it 
from the Bible. Mormonism and Mohammedanism 
proved their systems of polygamy from the Bible, 
and prove them today. Yes, Noah got drunk, and 
David committed adultery, but this doesn’t prove 
that they are right. 

However, it might be well to say that there is no 
place in the Bible where it can be proved that the 
form of dancing mentioned was a sex dance. The 
best authorities tell us that the dancing customs of 
the Bible were purely oriental in their form and 
were carried on by young women dancing alone, or 
by the sexes dancing separately. The modern dance 
is as different from the dance of the ancient people 
of Israel as are our costumes. But even if it 
should be proved that they danced the “Bunny Hug” 
and the “Turkey Trot” in the time of Moses or 
Isaiah, this would prove nothing for Christians in 
the twentieth century, when we are supposed to 
be living under the leadership of the Spirit and 
taking only such diversions as can be used in the 
name of the Lord Jesus. 

That the dance vitiates the spiritual nature of men 
and women alike is a fact well known by every sin- 

14 



IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


cere religious worker. The Church has recognized 
this fundamental fact, as we have already said, and 
we shall return to some positions taken by the 
Church later, but here we wish to point out that what 
great spiritual leaders have said is after all more 
fundamental than mere positions taken by ecclesias¬ 
tical bodies. It has been the great Statesman who 
has reached the point of highest vision in the welfare 
of organized society and not Parliaments or Con¬ 
gresses. No great literary society assembled ever 
wrote an Odyssey or a King Lear. To know the best 
there is in Music or Science one must turn to men 
like Wagner, and Handel, and Newton, and Edison. 
Art reaches its zenith in men like Phidias and 
Raphael and Michelangelo, rather than in Royal 
Academies and Art Institutes. The same thing is 
true about religion. 

When we turn to the greatest things achieved in 
religion and to the highest points reached in the 
realm of the Spiritual nature of Man we find that 
great souls have spoken as they have been moved by 
the Holy Spirit of God. Men like Isaiah and Moses, 
like John the Baptist and St. Paul have discovered 
for the human race the inner workings of the human 
soul, and mapped out for all time the path mankind 
must follow if it reach “the City which hath founda¬ 
tions whose builder and maker is God.” The world 
today follows more their vision than that of Sanhe¬ 
drin or Ecumenical Councils. And these prophets 
of God have had a succession in the great spiritual 
leaders of our own age. What these say about great 
moral questions or social sins should be given some 
weight in our thinking. 

When we ask these men their opinion of the sub¬ 
ject in question we find them invariably pronouncing 
against the dance. Dwight L. Moody says: “I would 
as leave go out into the street and eat mud as to 
dance.” Charles H. Spurgeon says: “When I hear of 
the modern dance I have an uncomfortable feeling 

15 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


about the throat, as I recall that a dance cost the head 
of the preacher, John the Baptist.” Bishop Coxe, of 
the Episcopal Church, New York, says: “The gross 
debasing waltz would not be tolerated for another 
year if Christian mothers in our communion would 
only set their faces against it, and remove their 
daughters from its contaminations, and their son* 
from the contempt of womanhood and womanly mod¬ 
esty which it begets. Alas! that women professing 
to follow Christ and godliness should not rally for 
the honor of their sex and drive these shameless 
dances from society! 

“The lasciviousness of dances too commonly toler¬ 
ated in our times, is so disgraceful to the age, and so 
irreconcilable with the Gospel of Christ, that I feel 
it my duty to the souls of my flock to warn those who 
run to the same excess of riot in these things, that they 
come not to the holy table. Classes preparing for 
confirmation are informed that I will not lay hands, 
knowingly, on any one who is not prepared to 
renounce such things. Let all choose deliberately 
whom they will serve.” 

Dr. Talmage says: “The dance is the first step to 
eternal ruin for a great multitude of both sexes. You 
know, my friends, what postures and attitudes and 
figures are suggested of the devil. They who glide 
into the dissolute dance, glide over an inclined plane, 
and the dance is swifter and swifter, wilder and 
wilder, until with the speed of lightning they whirl 
off the edges of a decent life into a fiery future. You 
have no right, my brother, my sister, to take an atti¬ 
tude to the sound of music which would be unbecom¬ 
ing in the absence of music. No Chickering Grand 
of city parlor, or fiddle of mountain picnic, can con¬ 
secrate that which God hath cursed.” 

Sam Jones says: “It is these worldly amusements 
that are sweeping over our homes and Churches, and 
paralyzing us, and making us today little better than 
graveyards. I never saw a spiritual man in my life 

16 



IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


that would not stand up and say, ‘Do you think theie 
is any harm in the dance?’ Why don’t you ask me 
if I think there is any harm in the prayer meeting, 
or if I think there is any harm in family prayer. You 
know there isn’t. And whenever you hear a fellow 
asking if there is any harm in the dance you can 
reply, ‘You lying old rascal, you know there is!’ 

“That young lady says, T would join the church 
but I love to dance.’ Well, young lady, go on. We 
will say that you go to two hundred balls. That’s 
a big allowance, isn’t it? And that you dance hun¬ 
dreds of sets. Bye and bye you die without God and 
without hope, and down into the flames of despair 
you go forever; and as you walk the sulphurous 
streets of damnation you can tell them, ‘I am in 
hell forever, it is true, but I danced four hundred 
times, I did.’ Now won’t that be a consolation?” 

We could go on and on repeating words from this 
great religious leader and from that; giving the 
testimony of the men and women of our own and 
other times, against the dance, but this is unneces¬ 
sary. This one thing I would emphasize further in 
this connection; young people themselves when asked 
to become Christians give the dance as the chief 
thing standing in their way, and they do this when 
no one is saying anything about the dance. There 
is inate honesty, a downright genuine religious con¬ 
viction, in the heart of the average young man and 
woman who do not belong to the church which holds 
the dance as being incompatible with the ideals of 
the Christian life and the Church of Jesus Christ, 
and they will say to you when asked to become 
Christians, “We would be glad to unite with the 
church, but we love the dance and we don’t believe 
we can be Christians and dance.” When these 
young people tell us that they cannot become 
Christians because they cannot give up the dance, 
they are placing the standards of the Church infin¬ 
itely higher than many people who belong to the 

17 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


Church; and we respect them more for not belong¬ 
ing to the Church if they are sure they cannot live 
up to its ideals, than we do those who join the 
Church and drag its ideals down to their own level. 

Some one will say, “You are responsible, or the 
Church is responsible for creating such' a dilemma 
in the mind of the young people. The reason these 
young people take such a position is by virtue of 
the fact that the Church has condemned dancing and 
created a situation which embarrasses it in its 
appeal to those who would belong to its fold, and 
even want to belong,, but will not, so long as the 
Church condemns something they can see no harm 
in.” But this is not the case. We contend that there 
is in the heart of the average young person a sense 
of the incompatibility of worldliness and worship; 
they know, apart from the position of the Church, 
that no one can carry water on both shoulders; 
they agree with Christ that no one can serve God 
and mammon. They choose the world because it 
seems to offer to them the larger outlook upon a 
life of pleasure and turn their back upon the 
Church. They themselves give as their chief reason 
for not' belonging to the Church, the dance, and 
any evangelist traveling the country from shore to 
shore will tell you this is true. Ask Dwight L. 
Moody, J. Wilbur Chapman, Billy Sunday, or any 
of these men whose names are household words 
around the world. 

Here is what William E. Biederwolf, one of the 
well known evangelists of our day has to say in 
this connection: “The most difficult young man, and 
especially young woman in the world to win for 
Christ, is the one who is devoted to the dance. In 
my work as an evangelist I have had scores upon 
scores say to me, ‘If I must quit dancing I will not 
become a Christian’, and this is usually said when 
not a word has been said about the dance. It must 
be the prompting of a guilty conscience. If the 

18 



IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


fascination of the dance is so terrible as to cause 
you to choose it in preference to Christ and the 
Church, that alone ought to stamp it as a great enemy 
to moral and spiritual beauty.” He also adds this: 

“For every professing Christian who has any* 
thing to say in defence of the dance there can be 
found an unconverted person who makes no pretense 
at being religious who will say that if he becomes a 
Christian he would expect to give up that form of 

indulgence. I wonder why this is?-1 wonder 

if it is possible that people who make no pretense 
at being religious can see ruin and moral putrefac¬ 
tion where God’s own professed children can see 
nothing but innocent and harmless pleasure? Or 
I wonder if the people of the world are more honest 
than some of us who will not admit the truth 
because, forsooth, it would rob us of an excitement 
that appeals to our sensual natures.” 

Our subject is: “Five Reasons Why Methodists 
Don’t Dance”, but only one of the religious leaders 
I have quoted belongs to the Methodist Church. 
Any one, therefore, who says the Church generally 
does not oppose the dance, does not know what he 
is talking about-as Sam Jones says in plain lan¬ 

guage, “He’s a liar”; because the Church as an 
organization has opposed it. The Methodist Church, 
to be sure, has led in the Crusade, but they have not 
been alone, thank God. Some in our own ranks have 
contended that it was a mistake we ever named the 
dance in a specific article and made it a point of 
expulsion from our fold. They say, and the press 
of the country at every General Conference makes 
capital of it, “that no one has ever been expelled, 
or at least is not expelled today for violating this 
article of our Discipline; and since we do not en¬ 
force it, we should eliminate it.” To this we reply, 
Why not say this about many provisions of our Dis¬ 
cipline? It am not saying we should not be more 
punctual in enforcing our Church law. But I am 

19 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


saying this: if we begin to eliminate solely on the 
ground of lax enforcement, why not eliminate some 
of the following: 

In our General Rules which every Methodist 
preacher is required to read in a public service at 
least once a year we find things like these: The 
profaning the Day of the Lord, either by doing ordi¬ 
nary work therein or by buying or selling.” 

“Uncharitable or unprofitable conversation; par¬ 
ticularly speaking evil of Magistrates or of Minis¬ 
ters.” 

“The putting on of gold or costly apparel.” 

“Laying up treasure upon earth.” 

And here is what the General Rules say about one 
who does these things. “If there be any among us 
who observes them not, who habitually breaks any of 
them, .we will admonish him of the error of his ways 
. .but then if he repents not, he hath no more place 
among us.” 

Does anybody know any Methodist who is guilty 
of breaking one of these rules? If so let him report 
to the proper- authorities and receive a reward! 

But the contenders for the elimination of article 
“280”, will say, “These things are in the General 
Rules. We are contending against things in our 
penal code where specific things are mentioned with 
a penalty of expulsion attached.” Alright let us 
turn to this Chapter where Article “280” is found. 
Is it the only thing there ever violated and not en¬ 
forced? What about Articles “281-287” inclusive? 
We repeat but one. Article “281” says: 

“If a member of the Church habitually neglect the 
means of grace, such as the public worship of God, 
the Lord’s Supper, family and private prayer, search¬ 
ing the scriptures, class meetings, and prayer meet¬ 
ings, the preacher in charge shall visit him and ex¬ 
plain to him the consequences if he continue his ne¬ 
glect. If he do not amend, he shall be brought to 

20 



IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


trial, and if found guilty of wilful neglect, he shall 
be expelled.” 

Have any of you who have followed the debates of 
the General Conference for the last twenty five years 
ever heard any debates proposing the elimination of 
Article “281”? If you started out today to shoot 
Methodists who violated the Discipline, and were 
ordered to shoot only those who fell guilty of arti¬ 
cles “280” and Article “281”, you would shoot ten 
Methodists who are guilty of violating article “281”, 
to one guilty of violating article “280.” Methodists 
generally don’t dance. A few of them do. A few of 
them get drunk, and a few of them don’t pay their 
honest debts. But Methodists generally are not 
guilty of these things. Methodists are guilty of 
neglecting “The Means of Grace.” 

We as Methodists have nailed this dancing busi¬ 
ness, and when we put a specific rule in our Disci¬ 
pline against it, that wasn’t the beginning of the fight 
against the dance. We have always opposed it. In 
1872 our General Conference named “Dancing and 
Attending Dancing Schools” out loud, and from that 
day to this the Dancing Masters and dance devotees 
have been offended. Why was a specific rule put in 
our Book of Discipline when it was? A careful 
reading of the temper of the times will give us an 
answer. Worldliness, particularly dancing, broke out 
as a scourge over the country following the relaxed 
tension at the close of the Civil War, like it is break¬ 
ing out today following the nervous tension that has 
been held in bounds during our recent war. One of 
the patrons of a fashionable ball I recently attended, 
while making the rounds of the dances in this City, 
said to me: “This is the first Annual Ball we have 
held for three years, as we thought it out of keeping 
with the times to hold such functions during the 
war.” 

But when the war is over not only the “Annuals” 
let loose, but every brood and breed swarm like a 

21 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


Plague of Flies or Frogs in Egypt, until the whole 
country is smothered by the creeping, hopping, wrig¬ 
gling thing. This was the situation the Church found 
itself in at the close of our Civil War. It will be well 
to read the preliminary remarks of “The Committee 
on the State of the Church” which made the report at 
the Conference when the much mooted article was 
placed in our Discipline. Hear what they said: 

“Your Committee have considered a large number 
of memorials and petitions from members of the 
Church in different sections of the land, deploring 
the sinful amusements too often indulged in by mem¬ 
bers of the Church; also many resolutions and pas¬ 
toral addresses eminating from Annual Conferences 
and other official bodies belonging to our own and 
sister denominations. Influenced by these as well as 
by our own personal observations, your committee 
are of the opinion that there is just cause for alarm, 
and a necessity for General Conference action, in 
order to arrest, if possible, practices which portend so 
much evil to the Church and to the world. The Gen¬ 
eral rules of our Church prohibit such diversions 
as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus. 

- This rule is sufficiently comprehensive, but 

not explicit enough to meet the needs of the times." 
They therefore took action against the dance and 
other forms of worldliness which at that time were 
running riot. And we pray God their action may 
serve us in this day when the sweeping floods of 
worldliness are beating against the very gates of the 
Temple of our God. It will serve us unless at some 
General Conference Lady Aphrodite woos and wins 
a majority of our delegates.* However, even then we 
will not be lifting the ban on dancing. 

♦At the recent General Conference two reports were sub¬ 
mitted by the Committe on The State of The Church bearing 
upon Paragraph “280.” The Majority report asked that no 
change be made in the Discipline, or the position of the 
Church. A minority report was submitted, asking that Para¬ 
graph “69” be substituted for Paragraph “280”, and that 

22 





IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


The contention against article “280” is that it 
should be taken out of our penal code, as we have 
already stated. Even if this goes, and the press of 
the country carries in bold headlines, as they no 
doubt will, “The Methodists Lift the Ban on Danc¬ 
ing”, it will not be true. We will still have in 
Chapter Three, under “Special Advices”, where the 
problems of Slavery, Marriage, Divorce and Tem¬ 
perance are stated, the significant “Section Five, 
Article Sixty Nine” on “Amusements” which con¬ 
demns the dance in no uncertain sound. 

To be fair to those who have contended for the 
removal of Article “280”, we may state another 
reason put forth by them. They say “Dancing 
and Attending Dancing Schools are lined up with 
several other forms of amusements, such as the 
Theater, Horse racing, Circuses, and the Playing of 
Games of Chance.” They say the rule is not at all 
inclusive, as it leaves out other forms of amuse¬ 
ments which are as inimical to the spiritual life as 
those named. Again they maintain, some of these 
things may not be like the dance wrong in their na¬ 
ture, but simply wrong in their tendency. There is 
a difference here we will admit, as we can see how 
card playing may be eliminated entirely from the 
gambling hell. We can see how the theater might 
be reformed and made a handmaid of the Church 
as it was in its early beginning. All the evils at¬ 
tending horse races in former years might be elim¬ 
inated, until horse racing might become a thousand 
times more uplifting than automobile races like 
are carried on at the great modern speedways. 
We can see how the circus could be made whole- 

this paragraph on “Amusements” be read before the public 
congregation once each year, as The General Rules are re¬ 
quired to be read. A motion to adopt the minority report 
was lost, and the majority report was adopted. There was the 
least debate and sentiment calling for a change at Des Moines, 
that has been witnessed at a General Conference in twenty- 
five years. 


23 




FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


some, with every objectionable feature of the ring 
removed. 

But there are some things you can’t reform, be¬ 
cause of their very nature. Drinking could not be 
reformed, and never can be. You can’t reform gam¬ 
bling. You can’t renovate prostitution. It refuses 
to be renovated. If you reform gambling it ceases 
to be gambling. -If you renovate the red light dis¬ 
trict you destroy it entirely. No system of regie- 
mentation will ever make a vice district anything 
but a pest house and incubator of moral rotteness. 
You may make it physically innocuous, or think you 
have, but you have simply perfumed a corpse and 
lifted a quarantine where a whole neighborhood is 
already innoculated by the germs of a black plague. 
So it is with the dance. It is inherently and inately 
wrong, and a purveyor of spiritual blight and death. 

And no one of those of our own ranks who is 
contending for a change in our Discipline is con¬ 
tending for the dance. At least if we may accept 
their own statements as fact, they are not. We do not 
agree with them, as to the need of any change. But 
we are fair enough minded to state their position. 
To be sure, there no doubt are some wordlings who 
are back of this move. But surely this charge cannot 
be brought against many of our leaders who think 
this specific rule should be taken out of its present 
setting. 

Suppose, however, for the sake of the argument 
we remove article “280” and every other mention 
of the dance from the Discipline. Will that change 
the nature of the dance? Will that make our wings 
sprout, and flood our Churches with saints? How 
does history respond to these questions? How have 
the socalled liberal Churches prospered? We have 
contended that the Church generally has opposed the 
dance, but there are Churches which have had no spe¬ 
cific rule against the dance. And there are a few com¬ 
munions who have thrown the cloak of approval 
about it. How about them? Well, we are not here 
24 



IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


to draw invidious comparisons, but you can hunt up 
the records of these Churches and look them over 
for yourself, and be better convinced. The facts 
are, the Methodist Church, which has been a liberal 
in theology, and in the early days considered a her¬ 
etic, but a conservative in its theories of social moral¬ 
ity, and considered narrow in its social ethics, has 
outstripped them all both in its home fields and in 
the Continents of all the earth and the islands of 
the seas. 

Now, when it comes to the work of our young 
people, we find that the days when we were hueing 
close to the line in asking them to separate them¬ 
selves from the world, were the days when our Ep- 
worth League was numbered by millions and not 
simply by the hundred thousand.* 

When I joined the Epworth League I was eighteen 
years old and I signed a pledge reading thus: “I 
will abstain from all those forms of worldly amuse¬ 
ments forbidden by the Discipline of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church.” This pledge has been “de¬ 
horned” of late to read, “I will take no diversions I 
cannot use in the name of the Lord Jesus,” or some¬ 
thing to that effect. I don’t see where the Epworth 
League has gained anything by filing the barbs off 
the pledge and perfuming it with trailing; arbutus. 
But while this little change has been made, the Ep¬ 
worth League has remained true to its ideals. I 
still believe, however, that it would have been better 
off had it left the pledge as it was when millions 


♦Word comes to me from Rev. J. T. Jones, Superintendent 
of the Rock Island District that at Brimfield, Illinois, a point 
on his District, they formerly had an average of fifty to 
sixty young people at the Epworth League meetings, but a 
Community House was built in the neighborhood and dances 
put in the programme—they are now holding “Moonlight 
Dances” in an open pavilion where on dark nights a single 
low power light is suspended above the center »f the plat¬ 
form—and the attendance at the Epworth League is ten old 
people. “The Community dance has literally killed our young 
people’s service,” he says. 


25 




FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


were attracted to its programme of “Look Up, Lift 
Up.” 

No, we have never gained anything even from the 
standpoint of mere numbers, to say nothing of spirit¬ 
ual life and the salvation of souls when we have soft 
pedaled around the worldly set who would like to 
save their souls if it could be done without any 
sacrifice or inconvenience. The Churches which 
have catered to the world spirit, either as individual 
Churches or as denominations, are bankrupt, if not 
bankrupt numerically, they are spiritually. The Ep- 
worth Herald has stated this fact for all time in words 
which will never lose their meaning. It said: 

“One of the chief arguments against the Methodist 
Episcopal Prohibition of worldly amusements is, that 
it keeps thousands of young people out of our Church. 
These young Christians, we are told, go into other 
Churches, which are more liberal in their views on 
the amusement question. We had an interesting con¬ 
versation the other day with the pastor of a Con¬ 
gregational Church. He told us of a very precious 
revival that had visited his Church during the past 
winter. Among those who decided to live the Chris¬ 
tian life were a number of young women. At the 
close of the special meeting the question of uniting 
with the Church came up. It was expected that these 
young people would at once come into the fellow¬ 
ship of the Church. But to the surprise of the pas¬ 
tor they demurred. 

“In explanation of their decision they declared that 
they had decided to remain outside the Church be¬ 
cause of the amusement question. ‘We like to play 
cards and dance,’ they said, ‘and we are not ready 
to give them up. We know of course that there 
are no specific rules in the Congregational Church 
against these things. But we know they are not 
right. No member of the Church should indulge in 
them. If we join the Church our conscience will 
compel us to give them up. That we are not ready 
to do, so we will stay outside.’ 

26 



IT VITIATES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE 


“We will agree that some people are kept out of 
the Methodist Church because of the Methodist 
Episcopal Law on the amusement question. But if 
these persons will tell the exact truth it would be 
found that most of them remain outside of the 
Church because of their love of worldly amusements, 
and not because of any law against them. They see 
that a worldly life and Church membership are 
incompatible.” 

Shall we try to make wholesome that which the 
world itself admits is unwholesome? Shall we as¬ 
sume to say to the world the dance is no barrier to 
religious culture and growth in grace, when the 
world laughs down its sleeve at our proffered offer 
to baptise and consecrate an unholy thing? The 
world has enough sense to know, if we haven’t, that 
the dance is inimical to the spiritual life and best 
interests of men’s souls, and that the Church member 
who tries to dance and carry holy water on his head 
is a fool. Furthermore you can follow the career 
of Church members who dance, you can take the 
members of this Church, or members of any other 
Church and follow their religious life and their 
spiritual endeavor and you will find that the men or 
the women who patronize the dance hall and are 
habitual devotees of the dance, parlor or public, when 
it comes to the religious work of the Church, they, 
one and all, are not worth a tinker’s dam. 

I have followed them and studied them, and I 
know what I am talking about. You can ask any 
pastor in this town and he will tell you the same. 
Religious workers in organizations like the Young 
Men’s Christian Association, and the Young Women’s 
Christian Association will tell you so. Here are two 
great organizations that have taken in every recrea¬ 
tional and cultural game or project they can lay 
their hands on, but there are two things they have 
discriminated against, and what are they? They are 
the dance and the card table, these two things. The 


27 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON'T DANCE 


Y. M. C. A. men of this town, working with boys 
and young men, tell me that the most difficult thing 
they have to tackle is to hold the young men true 
to the ideals of the Association with the dance dis¬ 
sipating their efforts. Why, they even say they can’t 
run the gymnasium on nights when two or three big 
dances are in the social programme of the city. The 
things the Y. M. C. A. has to put on, the gymnasium 
and athletic programmes, swimming and what not, 
are insipid affairs in comparison with the dance. 
A vitiated recreational life makes a Y. M. C. A. 
gymnasium as uninviting as a Mausoleum. This is 
a serious charge to bring against the dance hall, yet 
it is of small moment in comparison to the power of 
the dance to vitiate the religious and spiritual life. 
This is our first count against the dance. The second 
indictment we bring against the dance is: 

II. IT IS A HEALTH DESTROYER. 

In the second count we oppose the dance because 
it is a destroyer of health. Now, that ought to be 
a good reason, a man’s health. What shall it profit 
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his health? 
What shall it profit you, young man, young woman, 
if you gain the whole world, and all its pleasures, and 
lose your health? Tell me that a girl can begin the 
rounds of the dance when every other form of amuse¬ 
ment, or legitimate recreational or educational enter¬ 
tainment have closed their doors—that just at that 
time she can begin to dance, and dance until one 
or two o’clock in the morning, and then spend an 
hour in getting home, granting she goes directly home, 
and then get up the next morning and get to the 
shop or office by seven or by eight o’clock, and not 
injure her health? Oh, my friends, ask any physician 
if you don’t know. No, don’t ask him, for I don’t 
want you to expose your ignorance in that fashion. 
You know yourself, without asking anybody. 

I have talked to some of the young women, soma 

23 



IT IS A HEALTH DESTROYER 


of the young men who work in your factories and 
in your offices, and they tell me this—they say that 
positively the next morning after a dance where the 
young people of this office or that factory have been 
participants, these young women are gapping over 
their books, dropping asleep at their work, literally 
sick and having to go home in the middle of the 
afternoon. Because of the very nature of woman, 
under the strain of late hours and the excitement of 
the dance, she is unable to continue Her work and 
must go home sick. 

We all know what these things mean. Health is 
worth something, young man. Health is worth some- 
thing, young woman. I say to you we have a serious 
charge against the dance when we declare it to be 
inimical to the public health. It dissipates and un¬ 
dermines the vital strength of its participants. It de¬ 
velops into a craze, and those who go to a dance 
one night want to go the next night, and so we have 
it, a dance every night in the week. And some times 
as has been the case recently in Janesville, we have 
five and six dances running at high speed in one 
night. We have already called attention to the large 
number of young men and women we have ourselves 
seen in one place upon the dance floor between twelve 
and one o’clock. When you count up the number 
that are dancing at six or eight different places in 
a city the size of our town, you have some idea of 
the extent of this dissipation. 

It seems to me that the Samson Tractor Company, 
rather than hire a man or men to chaperone dances 
and carry them on for their own young people, had 
better hire men to go around and wake them up in 
the mornings, and get them out to the factory in time 

for work,-those who have been dancing all night 

in dance halls supported and carried on under out¬ 
side chaperonage or auspices. God knows we have 
enough dances going on without hiring men to pro¬ 
mote them under the guise of social welfare. The 
thing I deplore about the whole matter is this— 

29 




FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


When an enterprise is sanctioned and promoted 
by a large concern like the Samson Tractor Com¬ 
pany, and all the young men and women are counted 
in and invited to it by paid chaperons it carries a 
certain weight and influence it otherwise would not 
have. The same thing is true with reference to High 
Schools and Colleges promoting dances for their 
students. 

These industrial and educational concerns are de¬ 
luded by the theory that their patrons will attend 
these functions anyhow, and they had better carry 
them on under their own control than leave them to 
unauthorized and irresponsible promoters. Employers 
of labor must know that the dance is no health re¬ 
sort. Every high school principal and superintendent 
will admit, if he is honest, that the dance does not 
promote mental development, and that the time spent 
could better be spent in study. They know all too 
well that the call of special social functions, legit¬ 
imate and otherwise, dissipates the studious hours and 
promotes slipshod scholarship. But they are swept 
off their feet by the dancing deluge, and first allow 
it, then chaperone it. 

But we say to these industrial concerns and educa¬ 
tional establishments, we refuse to be deluded by your 
social promoters and your specious theories. The 
nakedness of the dance is not covered by your golden 
mantle or your cap and gown. Even if people who 
ought to know do say that the dance is a recreation, 
wholesome and harmless, we know better. Think a 
little yourself and you will see there is some weight 
to our contention. Why does the dance postpone 
its beginning until every other form of recreation 
and health culture is fast asleep? Why does it in¬ 
sist in keeping at it until morning? Can you name 
one form of recreation or entertainment that has 
turned the night into day, except the dance? Why 
don’t those who are prating about reforming the 
dance, suggest that it begin at a decent hour with 


30 



IT IS A HEALTH DESTROYER 


other decent things and close at ten or eleven o’clock 
with other social functions? Ah, the dance loves 
darkness rather than light because its deeds are evil. 

Sure you can carry anything to excess. But the 
dance is an excess to begin with. It begins in excess 
and ends in dissipation. The devotees of the dance 
will reply, “You might say that about foot ball.” 
Yet did you ever know a foot ball game to begin at 
nine or ten o’clock at night and be carried on until 
two o’clock in the morning? You never heard of 
a base ball game running until twelve o’clock at 
night. You can’t name one form of recreation, in 
doors or out doors, that selects that hour of the 
night when nature is crying out for rest and repair. 
The dance is peculiar in the fact that it chooses the 
late hours of the night when old or young cannot 
afford it. It claims its participants in a way that 
common sense condemns. To argue for the dance 
on the ground of its being a healthful recreation is 
positively silly to any person who stops to think. 
Of course the society set who have servants and who 
do not have to get up the next morning and report 
for duty, may lie in bed and snooze until noon, as 
some or most of them do. What’s time or night to 
them? Just so they get up in time to start the whirl 
of the next night that is all that is necessary. But 
you cannot do it—I cannot do it—the common run 
of folks cannot do it. We have nobody to make a 
living for us while we dance and dissipate and 
snooze. We have to get out and get to work. Work 
is the business of this world, and not pleasure, and 
especially dissipating pleasure. 

I lay down the proposition that the very nature 
of the dance as it is carried on eliminates it from the 
realm of recreation. It cannot therefore be classed 
as a recreation. The dance is an amusement wherein 
recreation is not the controlling, nor even the sec¬ 
ondary factor. The dance when analyzed is carried 
on simply and solely for pleasure; and the pleasure 


31 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


is of that sort, as we shall show presently, which has 
no element of wholesome recreation. It is carried 
on for most part indoors, in stuffy rooms and halls, 
where no physician would send people for recrea¬ 
tion or physical exercise. With two heated bodies 
pressed up against each other, belching their hot 
breath into each other’s faces, the dance blasphemous¬ 
ly claims a good bill of health. Between the sets, 
the dancers will be found crowded about open win¬ 
dows where their overheated bodies are exposed to 
the winter draughts. We have not mentioned the 
extravagance in dress of the female dancers, though 
we might bring a serious charge in here, because 
decollette has invaded practically every place where 
women go.* I have seen women dressed as im¬ 
modestly at Church functions as I have ever seen on 
the dance floor. I have seen them singing in our 
choirs when I felt moved with pity to take up a col¬ 
lection to buy them some clothes. But there is a 
point to be noted here, wherein the dance exposes 


*The following is the Press report of the annual “Varsity 
Prom'’ of the Wisconsin State University, held recently 

“The twenty-fifth annual junior prom of the University 
of Wisconsin took place in the State Capitol Friday night. 

“The prom has been called ‘THE QUARTER MILLION 
DOLLAR DANCE’, here. It is estimated that the total 
cost would easily reach that figure. Gowns, evening clothes 
for the men, taxis, flowers and house parties held during the 
week figure up to a high amount. 

“Souvenirs were given in the shape of cigarette cases for 
the men and vanity cases for the women. The dancing ended 
at 3 o’clock as all women were required by University rules 
to be at home before 4 O’CLOCK on the morning after the 
prom. 

“There were many velvet gowns of all hues as many of 
the girls had purchased velvet gowns for the prom when it 
was scheduled for February. Although flowers were decreed 
bad form, florists did a large business in corsages. There 
were large ostrich plume and feathered fans of all descrip¬ 
tions and shade.” 

We wonder how many members of Churches were repre¬ 
sented in this prodigal display »of wealth and vanity, while 
half of the world goes to bed hungry and gets up to don rags. 

32 




IT IS A HEALTH DESTROYER 


sparsely dressed women and girls to colds and in¬ 
fluenza and consumption. Tired and perspiring the 
dancers immerge from the dance halls in the dead 
hours of the night into the cold and sleet and snow. 
One hour’s exercise in a well ventilated gymnasium 
demands a cold shower and well clad body to im¬ 
merge safely into the cold of a winter’s night. 

The dance in order to make the first claim of being 
a healthful exercise should not slap in the face every 
common sense precaution used by those who have 
studied the laws of good health and recreation. If 
its defenders and devotees were really sincere in their 
claims, they would eliminate some of these things 
which make the dance a purveyor of physical ex¬ 
haustion and disease. I would suggest as a starter 
that the dancing masters introduce between acts a 
few minutes in simple calisthenics to give the girls 
a chance to breathe, and the men’s arms a chance 
to rest, and withal a chance for everybody to be re¬ 
lieved from that meandering, zigzag, sinuous, serpen¬ 
tine ramble. Another thing that might be introduced 
to good effect would be to equip the dance halls as 
we have the gymnasiums with shower baths and 
swimming pools. This no doubt would be throwing 
cold water on the proposition, and it might “catch 
its death of dampness,” as the old colored woman 
said, but it might get by muster as a health resort 
recreation. To be honest with you, the only place 
I have ever seen it carried on where I really thought 
it did have healthful properties or recreational value 
was in the Indiana State Insane Asylum. I under¬ 
stand they have introduced it with good effect in 
similar institutions throughout the country. 

We conclude this part of our message by quoting 
a recent book by Bishop Mathews Simpson Hughes 
on “Dancing And The Public Schools.” He says: 

“Now, the dance might conceivably be so con¬ 
ducted that it would be a health-giving pastime. If 
our dances were held in the open air, at rational 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


hours of the day, for a reasonable length of time, 
and if those participating were suitably attired to 
permit the freest play of the lungs, then we would 
have a wholesame diversion. With reference to 
health, it might then pass without challenge. But it 
is perfectly safe to say that no one remembers to 
have seen the reports of such dances in the columns 
of our newspapers. 

“On the contrary it may be safely asserted that we 
have no social usage more inimical to good health 
directly and indirectly. Dancing for several hours 
at a time under any circumstances is excess, and 
simply a form of dissipation. The dance begins at 
an hour when other social functions are concluding, 
and the monstrous absurdity of turning night into 
day, which has been grafted upon our modern social 
life, is probably due to that cause as much as any 
other. The dance is usually held indoors with 
vitiated atmosphere, and frequently accompanied 
with indulgence in food and drinks which could not 
secure a recommendation from a reputable physician. 
The physical effects are apparent the next day when 
one sex drags itself to work, and the other lies abed 
to recover. In its physicial disadvantages dancing 
as practiced today compares unfavorably with every 
outdoor pastime. It is nonsense to try to describe 
this thing as a physical exercise or a wholesome 
recreation. Right thinking people are likely to 
believe that our public schools can be put to better 
uses in the interests of youth than by preparing and 
encouraging them to participate in such functions.” 

The dance is not a recreation; it is not a healthful 
exercise; it is a purveyor of physical exhaustion and 
dissipation; it is in short a health destroyer. This is 
our second count against the dance. Our third in¬ 
dictment of the dance is: 


84 



iT IS A VULGAR AND INDECENT PERFORMANCE 


III. IT IS A VULGAR AND INDECENT PER¬ 
FORMANCE. 

Now what we are talking about today is the danoe 
of today. And we are not talking about an extreme 
here and there. We are discussing the modern dance 
which is the one advertised in the placards in your 
store windows, and the kind that are being conducted 
in the dancing schools, the sort running at high speed 
in your clubs and social functions, and the same breed 
carried on our high schools and parlors. To be sure 
many of the extreme forms I shall mention which are 
common in the public dance halls may not always be 
seen in the parlor dance, but the essential features of 
the modern dance are to be found everywhere. You 
must judge a thing, not by what it may be in a few 
censored places, but by its general trend and char¬ 
acter. What is the dance in ninety nine out of every 
hundred cases? It is what we affirm it to be,—an 
indecent and vulgar performance. 

When we went out after the saloon we were met by 
the sophistry that drinking in itself was not wrong, 
but only wrong when carried to excess. We had held 
up to our gaze the habits of our grandfathers and 
grandmothers who always had wine in the cellar and 
upon their tables. But we refused to be led astray by 
what a few people could do with drink a hundred 
years ago or today. We judged drinking by its major 
premise. We likewise judge the modern dance. It is 
not what our grandfathers did with “Old Dan Tuck¬ 
er,” or “Captain Jinks,” or what our grandmothers 
did with “The Virginia Reel.” It’s what they did with 
the sex dance that concerns us, and it’s what we ought 
to do with the same sort of dance that concerns them 
if they are still living. Somebody asks, “What about 
the square dance? Do you condemn it?” Well, I 
have more sense than to get up here and condemn 
something that has been dead for fifty years. I ven¬ 
ture to say that there isn’t a person here in this large 
audience under forty years of age who ever saw a 

86 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


square dance, even if you are a devotee of the dance 
hall. I never saw one. I wouldn’t know what ‘ The 
Virginia Reel” or the so-called “Stately Cotillion” 
were if I should see both of them come “reeling” 
down the street. You wouldn’t either. Those old 
dances are like the side saddles women formerly used, 
you young women wouldn’t know whether it was part 
of a flying machine or a submarine, if somebody 
would present you one. 

The dance of modern society we are talking about 
is the public or parlor embrace where men hug other 
men’s wives to music; where young men fondle and 
embrace the other fellow’s sweetheart on an even swop 
that the other fellow is fondling and hugging his. 
The dance we are talking about is the one where 
young women allow, without question or scruple, 
men they have just met to put their arms about them 
and assume attitudes on the dance floor they would 
allow under no circumstances at home or elsewhere. 
The dance we are talking about is that social function 
where women’s person is desecrated, cheapened, and 
made public property; it is the place, and only place, 
when men and women may embrace each other 
promiscuously with impunity. 

Now what is it that gives to the dance such license? 
How can you with any juggling of words prove that 
what is vulgar and indecent in a public park, or in 
the corridors of a hotel, or upon the street car or 
train, in a woman’s parlor or kitchen or upon her 
front porch or in her back yard, is not indecent and 
vulgar when carried on to motions set to music in a 
public place? Is there any other place in social life 
where such a transformation takes place? You know 
there is not. For you to find another man taking atti¬ 
tudes with your wife in your own home that you al¬ 
low to be taken upon the dance floor would give you 
grounds for belief in her infidelity. If you should 
kick him out of your house into the street, the public 
would applaud you. Yet men go to the dance and turn 
their wives over to whomsoever the occasion may de- 

36 



IT IS A VULGAR AND INDECENT PERFORMANCE 


mand without, seemingly, the least hesitancy. Women 
likewise turn their husbands over to the smooth en¬ 
chantress, perfumed and painted and nudely dressed, 
to embrace her and catch her insinuating eye as they 
glide over the waxed maple. 

If all this is true about married men and women, 
it is all the more true with reference to the unmar¬ 
ried. The most sacred treasure any young woman 
jean have is to hold her person inviolate. When once 
a young woman gives her person over to the promiscu¬ 
ous embrace of the dance she has broken down many 
powers by which she has been endowed by nature for 
the protection of her virtue. We hold that there is 
but one person who has the right to encircle her body 
with his arm and that is the young man she expects to 
marry. She need not be prudish or finical in this, and 
she may be deceived by the man she trusts to be her 
lover, but let her throw her modesty to the winds, and 
allow every fellow she may go with, to take just such 
liberties with her person as are taken upon the dance 
floor, and the freedom she allows will become com¬ 
mon knowledge of the young men of the neighbor¬ 
hood. 

What well bred and well trained young woman 
would allow any young man who may come along to 
take these liberties with her, in any place under God’s 
high heaven, except upon the dance floor? But let 
us ask again, what, in the name of all that is good, 
makes the difference between the dance floor and the 
public park or the secluded nook or corner? What is 
decent in one place ought to be in another. If it is 
vulgar and unbecoming for a young lady to assume 
attitudes in private she may assume in public with 
propriety, I declare to you there is something wrong 
with our ethics and social customs. Is it because the 
public gaze puts a check upon such attitudes by say¬ 
ing you may go this far, but no farther? God pity 
us all; and those who defend the dance may God have 
' mercy upon them, for their juggling with holy things 
by calling black white and white black. 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


The facts are, the dance goes just as far as it pos¬ 
sibly can. It goes to the very brink of the precipice 
in spite of the public gaze. It does things to the call 
of music, upon a parlor floor, it would be arrested 
for doing in a public park in the moonlight or in some 
shady corner. Its indecent and vulgar attitudes 
assumed upon the floor of a public hall would hail it 
into police court if attempted in broad daylight upon 
our boulevards or in our back alleys. These attitudes 
I mention here are those every dancer is asked to as¬ 
sume, and does assume in practice. 

But this is not all. We have said that a thing must 
be judged by what it constantly tends to become. 
The common attitude of the dance is not only vulgar, 
but it constantly tends to run into loathsome and posi¬ 
tively disgusting forms. Look at some of the common 
dances of our day. I didn’t invent them for this dis¬ 
course. Some of them are hoary with age. Some of 
them have run the gauntlet of public approval, and 
are loaded down with credentials. Others are still 
trying to get a clean bill of health from the dancing 
masters and in the meantime are tramping the danc¬ 
ing masters’ feet off the floor. Out of thine own 
mouth will I judge thee—thou vulgar, lewd, lecherous, 
licentious voluptuary. Out of thine own mouth will 
I condemn thee. Here are some of the most popular 
dances that have been, and are, going the rounds of 
our time. 

“The Bunny Hug”, “The Turkey Trot”, “The Griz- 
zley Bear”, “The Texas Tommy”, “The Argentine 
Tango”, “The Half Nelson”, ‘The Body Hold”, “The 
Shimmy Lock”, “The Brazilian Maxixe”, and “The 
Charlie Chaplin Wiggle.” Then there is “The Con¬ 
sumptive’s Polka,” a dance invented for the Charity 
Ball wherein the poor consumptive is supposed to be 
imitated by the wail of the music. God help us, what 
may we expect next?* 


♦Since this sermon was delivered the following new dance * 
has come to my attention. While at the General Conference 




IT IS A VULGAR AND INDECENT PERFORMANCE 


Could any place but a brothel invent such an abom¬ 
inable list of indecent and vulgar contortions? Their 
animal movements beggar description. They are 
known as the animal dances because they call into 
play certain bodily movements peculiar to the ani¬ 
mals after which they are named. They were intro¬ 
duced into this country some ten or fifteen years ago 
and are reputed to have come from the low dives of 
South America. They were the craze of New York 
and other large cities, and they went to such dis¬ 
gusting limits that many cities forbade them. The 
police of New York City closed many of the Cafes and 
Cabaret halls in order to save the girls of the great 
Metropolis from such degrading and loathsome 
things. The University of Wisconsin said: “If any 
student is caught guilty of dancing these rotten animal 
contortions, he will be expelled the same as if he got 
drunk.” “The Argentine Tango” and other South 
American dances “swept like a social pestilence over 
Europe and the United States” a few years ago. 
“Tango” is a Latin word, or of Latin derivation and 
means “I touch”. It is descriptive of bodily contact 
and the movement carries with it all of the loath¬ 
some insinuations of an abandoned life. 

The New York Sun, enraged at the trend of the 
dance, recently printed an editorial on “The Revolt 
of Decency”, and among other things said: “Great as 
is the popularity of these graceless contortions, 


in Des Moines I overtook a man carrying a sign announcing 
a dance. He was also calling the invitation as he walked 
down the street. I said, “Who goes to your dance”? He 
said, “Everybody, you are welcome.” I said, “What’s the 
craze out here, now? Do they dance the shimmy lock?” 
“It’s too hot for the shimmy lock”, he said, “They have shed 
their shimmys, and the rage in our town is, “The Mucilage 
Glide”. “What sort of dance is that”, said I. “O, it’s the 
most fascinating dance ever”, said he, “take my word for 
it, it’s a. Peach”. “Well”, said I, “from its name, if it is a 
peach, it must be the Cling Variety”. I didn’t go to see the 
“Peach”. It’s name suggested all decent people need to 
know—“The Mucilage Glide”. 

39 




FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


and numerous though their practitioners are, there 
remain a saving intelligence and morality in -the com¬ 
munity which recognize their significance and loath 
their indecency. Let the seemingly incredible pro¬ 
testations that innocence and virtue may indulge in 
these excesses without realization of their origin and 
meaning be accepted. Politeness and optimism dic¬ 
tate this insult to intelligence. Preserved throughout 
all the ages by the habitues of low resorts, by strump¬ 
ets, and their patrons, these dances have never lost 
their original reason for existence, or been deprived 
by their appeal to the profligate and debased.” 

The Detroit Free Press, a paper not at all given to 
preaching society’s qualms, recently, in commenting 
upon the tides of sensuality that had broken loose 
since the war, said: 

N “The mad passion for pleasure which has seized the 
whole world since the war ended, the extravagance, 
the plunge into sensuousness, the daring flights in cos¬ 
tuming and in the dance, the devotion to froth and 
frivolity, the utter disregard for all the rules of pru¬ 
dence and thrift, the rebellion against temperance in 
any form that have caught millions are causing some 
who are sober minded and who have remained at 
their old moorings a great deal of anxiety. The 
moralists are aghast. The religionists behold with 
dismay what seems to be a submersion of the early 
post bellum trend toward things of the spirit which 
they had hoped to use as a lever for bringing about 
the regeneration of the world. 

“With specialized application Frederick O’Brien, 
a traveler of experience who recently wrote a fascin¬ 
ating book on the Marquesan islands, indicates the 
general situation in some observations made in con¬ 
nection with a description of a native South Sea 
dance. Rag time Mr. O’Brien describes as a reaction 
from the nervous tension of American commercial 
life and he remarks in elaboration: ‘It is a swinging 
back to the old days when man, though a brute, was 
free. There is release and exhilaration in the bar- 

40 



IT IS A VULGAR AND INDECENT PERFORMANCE 


barous syncopated song, and in the animal like mo¬ 
tions of the jazz dances with their passionate attitudes, 
their unrestricted rhythms, and their direct appeal to 
sex. The ragtime melodies coming straight from the 
jungles of Africa through the Negro, call to im¬ 
pulses in man that are stifled in big cities, in factory 
and slum, and the nervous wearing tension of busi¬ 
ness’. 

“However, the writer of this brief analysis is not 
endorsing the reversion he discusses; he is merely set¬ 
ting out what he considers fact; for in another con¬ 
nection he asserts—out of his experience and obser¬ 
vation—that the civilized man who undertakes to be¬ 
come a child of nature merely succeeds in becoming 
a brute. 

“It is not to be denied that the situation through¬ 
out the civilized world is rather critical, not so much 
because of what has actually happened up to this time, 
as because of what may come to pass unless the pub¬ 
lic is able to place a check upon itself.” 

The abandon and reckless blasphemy of some of 
the dance promoters may be seen in the following 
advertisement that appeared this winter in a Wiscon¬ 
sin paper. It came to our attention through Rev. 
T. D. Williams, a former pastor of this Church: 

“At the New Opera House, Friday, December 19: 
Class 8 to 9; dance 9 tol2. The world’s end has been 
predicted for December 17. An error may have been 
made and be delayed until December 19. At any 
rate we will celebrate the big event appropriately. 
You are all invited to come to the opera house to die. 
Horns and other carnival novelties will be furnished 
so we can have as much fun dying as possible. It 
costs but fifty cents to come and die with us. And 
what a delightful death? with a girl in your -armsl' 
Don’t miss it. This does not happen even once in a 
lifetime. Come and spend some of your money, it 
will not be worth anything after the^nd of the^world. 
In case the world survives we have arranged a big 

41 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON'T DANCE 


holiday week dance for our friends on Monday, 
December 29. But be sure to come and die with us 
on December 19.” 

Things get under such headway ever and anon that 
some of the masters of the dance fly into the public 
gaze yelling for reforms.* They have these spasms 
periodically, and the last fit they threw was at their 
January meeting in New York. Their malodorous 
product needed ice in midwinter and they sent out 
the S. 0. S. call throughout the country by the means 
of the public press. 

“New York, January 15.—Old-fashioned, keep your 
distance dances are to displace the modern jazz steps, 
if the nation wide reform movement undertaken by 
the American National Association of Masters of 
Dancing proves successful. The dancing masters, it 
is announced here, count upon the support of mothers, 
fathers, daughters, sons, dance hall proprietors, danc¬ 
ing teachers and hostesses—and if necessary the 
police department—to exterminate the “half nelson”, 
the “body hold”, “shimmy lock” and other imported 
ball room grips which are practiced by some dancers. 
Cheap and vulgar music is also to come under the 
ban, and, according to a circular just issued by the 
Association, those in charge of community or public 
dances are urged to show their opposition to undesir¬ 
able dances by distributing “You will please leave the 
hall” cards to those who persist in offending. 


♦Apropos of the Methodists! And now comes the startling 
resolution of the Dancing Masters’ Association, adopted in 
New York recently, asking the Methodist Church to lift the 
ban on dancing and join hands with Terpsichorean artists to 
renovate the Modern Dance. In order to prove their sincerity 
of purpose and show that they are willing to come more 
than half way, the dancing masters invented a new dance, 
“THE WESLEYAN”, and promised to make it the most 
wholesomely popular craze of the season! In the very city 
where we denounced “The Gliding Art,” by holding up the 
Wesleyan ideal of clean living, we behold “The New Born” 
blasphemously christened in the name of the Founder of 
Methodism! 


42 




IT IS A VULGAR AND INDECENT PERFORMANCE 


“The women, it is charged, are often as much to 
blame as their partners, and in some cases dance hall 
proprietors are advised to pick out ten or a dozen 
objectionable couples, and if a warning is dis¬ 
regarded, to oust them at once. Some of the rules 
and regulations which all are urged to obey follow: 

“Dance music should be bright and cheerful, prop¬ 
erly accented and the phrases well divided. Cheap, 
vulgar music of the extreme jazz type invites cheap, 
vulgar, meaningless dancing—The Association has 
adopted the following tempos, it being impossible the 
masters say, to regulate fast dancing—Steps and 
movements that cannot be controlled should not be 
taught by dancing teachers. ‘Shimmy dancing’, a 
shaking jerking of the upper part of the body while 
taking short steps or standing still, should not be 
tolerated. Dancing should be from the waist down, 
and not from the waist up.” 

Just listen to some of those sanctimonious restric¬ 
tions. “Keep your distance dances.” “If necessary 
the police department.” “Cheap and vulgar music 
to come under the ban.” “You will please leave the 
hall cards.” “Cheap vulgar meaningless dancing.” 
“Impossible to regulate fast dancing.” “Steps and 
movements that cannot be controlled.” You innocent 
Church members didn’t know that the camel was 
poking his nose into the tent so far, did you? You 
never dreamed that the dancing professors were really 
alarmed at the decadent morals of the dance you love 
so dearly, I know you didn’t. Ah, the dancing mas¬ 
ters have rushed out with a bag of salt to dam the cur¬ 
rent and save the dykes! Yes, they are throwing 
themselves against the current, but they will not be 
apt to stop that which has become a flood: because 
they have started the stream and as long as they keep 
up the dance it is going to run out into such things. I 
will tell you in a few minutes why it runs out into 
such things. 


43 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


“Oh well, of course,” you will say, “That is what 
some dances are. Sure. There are good dances and 
there are bad dances, we will admit. There are some 
that are bad.” But my contention is, my friends, 
that the dance as it is carried on is in itself indecent 
and vulgar, and you tell me that it is a beautiful and 
cultural thing, one which gives poise and grace and 
beauty of form! Do you mean to insult the hundred 
thousand ministers’ wives in the United States, who 
practically, without exception, have never had the 
lecherous paramour’s arm about their waist? Do you 
mean to insult the hundreds of thousands of White 
Ribboners who have frowned upon the dance! Do 
you mean to insult America’s uncrowned queen, 
Frances Willard, whose statue, and whose alone of 
womankind, adorns Statuary Hall in Washington! 
Do you mean to tell me that women like Lady Henry 
Somerset and Frances Willard, who have frowned on 
the dance, don’t know what the dance is, or what 
they are talking about when they condemn it! Do 
you mean to tell me that the dancing masters are the 
authorized custodians of beauty of face and form! 
“The foolish prattle about the dance being an accom¬ 
plishment productive of grace and elegance of man¬ 
ner merits the sternest rebuke because of its imperti¬ 
nence.” 

“Is it indeed really so that to find persons of grace 
and elegance of manners we must turn to those who 
have been under the fastidious touch of the dancing 
master? Is it indeed the dancing master himself who 
is to be our model—a man who ordinarily can get no 
entrance into the society for which he is supposed to 
be polishing the children and youth of Christian 
homes? Good manners! Is this something lodged 
in the mechanism of the body rather than in the cham¬ 
bers of the soul,—a thing of airs and bows and affec¬ 
tation, and not, first of all and chiefly, a thing of 
cultured head and heart? It is difficult to do less than 
summarily dismiss such a plea as a mere excuse for 
training a child for the walks of fashion and world- 

44 



IT IS A VULGAR AND INDECENT PERFORMANCE 


liness. Distant be the day when the manners of the 
dancing master take the place of the manly walk of 
an ingenious youth of conscious rectitude or the 
natural grace of a pure girl taught by a pure mother 
and a native sense of delicacy how to behave. The 
youth of this generation, educated in our schools and 
led to the feet of Christ as the great teacher of man- 
ners through morals, will compare favorably with any 
that have gone before in elegant accomplishment, 
though they have never come under a dancing master 
for a day nor taken a step in the merry dance.” 
(Haydn, “Amusements”). 

I have studied the dancers as they scuttled 
around over the floor with special reference to this 
claim of the dance being productive of handsomeness 
and elegance of form. The man has his right arm 
around the woman’s waist, while she has her left arm 
around his neck or thrown over his right shoulder. 
He clasps her right hand with his left, and they pro¬ 
trude these arms at right angles to their bodies. 
Their faces are thus thrown together, and if the danc¬ 
ers are about the same height, and I observed that 
this was necessary to dance properly, their cheeks are 
pressed one against the other. They then meander 
over the dancing floor according to the taste of the 
dancers, now quickly, now slowly, as the music may 
demand; and this meandering, spiral movement is 
more of a backward trend for the women than for the 
men. In ninety nine cases out of every hundred their 
bodies are pressed tightly together, and in order for 
them to move about, as you will readily see, their 
limbs must alternate between each other. 

I have not described, or attempted to describe the 
attitudes or movements of any of the dancers or any of 
the dances we have mentioned above. This would 
beggar description and be an insult to decency itself. 
I have simply given the common attitudes or positions 
of the dancers as you will see them on any dance 
floor from coast to coast, and in any kind of dance 
whether it be in the Guild hall of some Church or in 

45 




FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


the parlor of some deacon. It’s the attitude as¬ 
sumed by every woman, whether she be a young girl 
or a grandmother. 

Now for anyone to stand up and demand elegance 
of manners for this sort of thing, and say it is pro¬ 
ductive of handsomeness and beauty of form, is 
really humorous. You know I have seen some 
amusing things on the dance floor. Here in Janes¬ 
ville recently I saw a great big woman, who would 
have weighed at least two hundred pounds, if she 
had been properly dressed, and here was a little mus¬ 
cular, athletic fellow pushing her around over the 
floor, and they came where I was and got close 
enough for me to see that she was “sweating like a 
nigger at election” and “panting like a lizard in dog 
days.” I had to laugh and say to myself, “Go to it, 
old girl, God help you. If you can work off any of 
that fat, perhaps the dance will be a good thing for 
you after all.” I saw also a great tall fellow, tall as 
I am or taller, he looked like a bean pole, sparce 
and boney and skinny. The boys would probably 
call him “spider” out in the language of “The Dia¬ 
mond.” He was dancing with a little, short girl 
who would have to stand on her tiptoes to look into 
his vest pocket, and he was sort of cooing over her as 
they danced around. They were the only two I saw 
keeping the proper distance the dancing masters are 
talking about. 

On last Wednesday night, I came down from one 
of the dance halls into the street at a quarter of one, 
and the dance was in full blast. Mind you I had 
preached at a revival meeting, gone home, lay down 
and slept two hours, arose and went to three dances 
that were still running at high speed after midnight, 
and as I came down into the street at one o’clock I 
met a policeman who was standing there—he did not 
know who I was—and I said to him, “I suppose you 
stay around here all night, this is your run is it?” 
“Yes” he said, “I have to make the rounds of these 
dance halls at one o’clock or after to see that all 

46 



THE LIFE OF THE DANCE IS SEX EXCITEMENT 


of the dancers are out and properly behaving them¬ 
selves.” I said, “Do you have any trouble”? “No,” 
he said, “They have janitors in most of these build¬ 
ings, and they close the buildings up anyway. I 
don’t have a great deal of trouble.” I said, “The 
dance seems to be quite a craze in Janesville, these 
days.” “A craze,” he said, “I should say a craze, there 
were six of them on tonight,” and he said, “I don’t 
know what it’s coming to. Of course along towards 
the late hours of the night they get quite a heat on, 
and it’s the people who stay late we have to watch 
or look after. I don’t know but what it would be a 
good thing if they would invent some sort of a gate 
to put between the dancers to make them keep their 
proper distance.” That’s what the policeman said. 
Two young men came down out of the Armory 
where another dance was running and I said to them 
“What’s running in the Armory tonight”? One of 
them answered me as he walked on, saying, “It*s a 
(bawdy) house on wheels.” He use another adjec¬ 
tive for “bawdy,” but the word he used is excluded 
from polite speech. 

My friends, do you wonder that the Church of the 
living God has discarded this unholy thing? But 
this is not all. The most serious charge we have to 
make against the dance is not yet made. Our Fourth 
count, the fourth reason why Methodists don’t dance 
is: 

IV THE LIFE OF THE DANCE IS SEX EX¬ 
CITEMENT. 

Here is the citadel of this meandering, wiggling, 
unholy social allurement. Here is the shrine about 
which the devotees of Aphrodite worship. It is here 
we find the swine in the spring which widens out into 
a river of pollution. But this is no secret. We are 
not “telling news out of school.” The indictment, 
in one form or another, that has been brought against 
the dance from the very earliest times is, that sex 

47 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


excitement is the very life of it, and you take sex ex¬ 
citement out of it and the dance will die like a dog 
shot through the heart. 

Professor Amos R. Wells, a name that is a house¬ 
hold word throughout the Christian world, says: 
“Dancing, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts. 
One third is esthetic, one third is physical exercise, 
and one third is sensual. Any honest investigator 
of the dance as now practiced in America, will agree 
that the third part into which this heathen Gaul is 
divided, is the stronghold of the Province.” Every 
claim for the dance of a cultural, recreational, or 
pleasurable nature that are brought forth by its de¬ 
fenders are simply cork floats to suspend a drag net 
whose lead line fathoms and sweeps the slimy depths 
of man’s unregenerate, sensual nature. And why not 
be honest, as the average man who makes no pro¬ 
fession of religion is, and admit it. No, my friends, 
it is the crowd who want to be counted in with the 
sheep, and yet who in their nature are goats, that 
keep insisting that the dance is an innocent amuse¬ 
ment, a wholesome recreation, a beautiful means of 
expressing the music that is in one’s soul,—a means 
of worship as found in the Bible, and “a method of 
keeping the lambs from straying from the Fold.” * 

Here again we are not discussing a hypothetical 
something; we are not talking about a dance of 


♦Among the many letters printed in the Public Press, pro 
and con, provoked by this sermon was one, presumably by a 
member of the Church, which among other things said: 

“The reverend gentleman who rails against the dance has 
never learned that dancing is one means of expressing the 
music that is in every one’s soul. The person who can nei¬ 
ther sing, play upon an instrument, nor dance is indeed to 
be pitied. I cannot imagine a more innocent good time for 
the young people of the Church, in the Sunday School room 
or in the basement under the supervision of a good teacher 
who would teach correct and graceful positions, while the 
old folks sat near by and looked on, and visited. Any mental 
or moral morons who crept into the fold could be removed 
and their cases dealt with separately.” 

48 




THE LIFE OF THE DANCE IS SEX EXCITEMENT 


angels, we are talking about the modern dance. You 
can waste your time in talking about what the dance 
might be, I am speaking facts about what the dance 
is. You can mouse in the archives of ancient moral¬ 
ists and Biblical exegetes to prove what the dance 
was. I don’t care what the devil was, if he was 
kicked out of heaven and now is the chieftain of all 
hell and abominations cursed of God, I take my bear¬ 
ings from what he now is. What is the dance today? 
Answer: It is an amusement wherein sex excitement 
is its very life blood. 

Now we don’t claim that every body who goes to 
the dance goes there primarily for such excite¬ 
ment. There are the very young of both sexes who 
go because their associates dance. The gregarious 
nature of men and women leads them to social gather¬ 
ings. The dance is a social meeting place. But this 
was true of the saloon. The very fact that the saloom 
has gone, gives larger sway for the dance. Its un¬ 
usual revival at this time grows out of the closed 
habitat of thousands of men, as much as any other 
thing. But the dance will be a poor substitute for 
the saloon. It will be out of the frying pan into the 
fire. Some of the bad features of the public dance 
halls in our larger cities will be elimitated by the 
elimination of drink. But the character or inate 
nature of the dance will not be changed by the death 
of king alchohol. 

We surely would be more than foolish to simply 
fulminate against the dance because its fascination 
is founded upon the primary instinct of sex. “Male 
the female created He them,” and the best we know 
in life comes from the proper love of man for woman 
and woman for man. The home and all that is dear 
to human society is built upon sex difference. “Mar¬ 
riage is honorable in all things and the bed unde¬ 
filed” is the message that was heralded to a world 
of lust and abominable social practices in the early 
Christian century, “but whoremongers and adulterers 
God will judge.” We are contending for no Medieval 

49 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


asceticism or celibate priesthood. We do not believe 
in the segregation of the sexes, even for educational 
purposes. We hold that the normal life of men and 
women is where they are thrown together that their 
ideals and struggles may interplay upon each other. 

Our contention is simply this, that unlike other so¬ 
cial functions where the sexes meet and supplement 
the life of each other, the dance would not get very 
far were it not for the mingling of the sexes in bodily 
contact. You prohibit men dancing with women or 
women dancing with men and try it out and see how 
long the dance will run. Even let both sexes go to 
the dance halls together and mingle in social inter¬ 
course between the sets and go home together, but 
draw a line through the dancing floor and compel 
the men to dance with men on one side and the women 
to dance with women on the other side, and see how 
far you will get. Why not try it out? You know as 
well as I do that it wouldn’t last through the first 
round. It would take more than a chalk line to 
separate the dancers very long. And the desire to 
break through the line would be mutual. The 
women would be just as anxious to sign an “armi¬ 
stice as the men. The facts of the case are, women, 
especially married women who dance, are crazier 
about the dance than men. When it comes to danc¬ 
ing, the average female devotee is about like the 
young lady who had a rather backward sweetheart. 
She said to him: “You can’t kiss me unless you tie 
me, and I won’t tell you where that rope is hanging 
there on the back of your chair.” 

I have given some study to the type of girls and 
women who are fascinated by the dance, to whom the 
dance is “a dream,” and a thing to be anticipated, 
and I have come to this conclusion which, while it 
may be an assumption, is I think a fair and safe one. 

The woman who loves the dance is tempermentally 
of a vivacious and affectionate nature. This is noth¬ 
ing against her. In fact it is a trait of strong woman¬ 
ly character. But it forms the basis of exhilara- 

50 




THE LIFE OF THE DANCE IS SEX EXCITEMENT 


tion and seeming emancipation of the woman’s spirit, 
and at the same time is the very ground upon which 
her character is undermined. Her strength thus be¬ 
comes, under the spell of the dance, the very vantage 
ground of her undoing. Many women dance their 
feet into the very mouth of hell before they are 
aware of it. 

The average woman who dances denies having any 
conscious sex feeling. She is fascinated by the 
masculine embrace and enjoys a pleasurable sensa¬ 
tion she does not stop to analyze. When confronted 
with the charge of sex excitement she resents it. 
When she is asked about the effect of the dance upon 
her dancing companion, she usually replies: “I 
know I have no improper thoughts myself, I conduct 
myself in such manner that he has no reasons to 
have improper thoughts towards me, if he does, that’s 
his problem, not mine.” I have had well educated, 
well trained young women who were members of 
the Church tell me virtually those very words. What 
would you think of the young woman who doesn’t 
care “a fig” what she arouses in the thought of her 
dancing companion? Well that is not our question 
just now. However, this is the attitude assumed by 
the average woman who is a devotee of the art of 
Terpsichore. 

I am not contending that women who deny any sex 
excitement in the embrace of the dance are wrong, 
or are not telling the truth. I accept their state¬ 
ments for what they are worth so far as the women 
are consciously concerned. Mr. T. A Faulkner, ex¬ 
dancing master of Los Angeles, takes an opposite 
position to this and he ought to know some thing at 
least of what he is talking about. Before his con¬ 
version he was proprietor of the Los Angeles Danc¬ 
ing Academy, and president of the Dancing Master’s 
Association of the Pacific Coast. He is oft quoted 
as an authority on the evils of dancing, coming as he 
did to his knowledge by actual experience. He says: 
“I have heard girls express utter innocence of having 

51 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


any improper emotion aroused by the waltz, but I 
do not believe this to be strictly true of any girl; 
if it is, I am sorry for that girl, for she has a sad 
lack m her nature. Male and female, God created 
them, and placed within them emotions intended to 
be shared only by man and wife; and if others in¬ 
dulge in these emotions and continually arouse them 
by assuming the dance position, which is only fit for 
man and wife, they commit a sin against God and 
nature. If these passions are aroused, one of two 
things are sure to happen;—sooner or later she will 
yield to temptation and fall; or in ruined health reap 
the sad harvest of unsatisfied passion.” 

What we do claim, however, is that while ^young 
women may be freer from conscious sex excitement 
than their dancing companions, their temperament and 
nature have led them about as far as the men have 
been led. Woman naturally is more satisfied by the 
mere embrace, than man is. What to her may be 
exhilaration and satisfaction, may be to the young 
man she dances with but the beginning of an unholy 
desire to satisfy passion. Moreover there is a stimu¬ 
lation to the girl which is insidious and ominous, and 
one which Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, of Northwestern 
University, one of the greatest authorities on sex 
problems in the world, calls “the sub-conscious sex¬ 
ual stimulation.” In his book on “Reproduction and 
Sexual Hygeine” he goes into this question at length. 
We shall not have time here to elucidate his findings. 
Suffice it to say that he names two kinds of sex 
stimulation. One he calls “conscious” and the other 
he calls “sub-conscious,” or changing the terms he 
designates one as “Primary,” and the other as “Sec¬ 
ondary.” He is not discussing the dance as such but 
closes the paragraph by saying: “This is in con¬ 
tradistinction to primary sex stimulation, and the 
chief objection to dancing is that it often passes the 
point of secondary sex results and causes harmful 
rather than healthful stimulation.” 


52 



THE LIFE OF THE DANCE IS SEX EXCITEMENT 


We have no disposition to go into any hair splitting 
discussion of the psychological labyrinths of tempta¬ 
tion, social control, and sex stimulation. It is a 
recognized fact, however, that deeper than we have 
heretofore suspected lie the factors of man’s making 
or undoing. The Biblical writer many centuries ago 
anticipated the discoveries of modern mental science 
and the reality of the subconscious mind when he 
said: “Lust conceived bringeth forth sin, and sin 
when it is finished bringeth forth death.” An astute 
and imperial thinker later set it forth thus: “First 
the thought, then the act, then the habit, then the 
character, then destiny.” The thought or impression 
may be made upon the mind, upon the subconscious 
mind, of the young girl or even young man, and they 
may not be aware of it, but it will not be long until 
the whirl of the dance will bring these stimulations 
to the surface, and experience shows that the act is 
not far distant. Be the stimulation to the feminine 
sex what it may, this danger cannot be denied, or 
sunk in the unfathomable nature of woman. 

We shall have something to say in a moment about 
the man’s side of the dance proposition, but it will 
be well to remember here that woman cannot wash 
her hands of all the unclean things that originate on 
the dance floor. If women are more moral than men, 
it remains to be proved who is the chief instigator 
of the sex dance. By actual count you will find more 
women in attendance at the dance than men. You 
never heard of old bachelors having a dance, and 
you never heard of old maids having a dance and yet 
I have seen but very few dance halls where there 
were not some girls dancing around by themselves. 
This I contend is not that girls like to dance by them¬ 
selves, but is for the simple reason that there are * 
not enough men to go the rounds. God pity you 
girls, I say God pity you with all due respect to my 
mother and sisters and to my wife, that there are 
so many of you crowding the dance halls that men 
cannot be found for partners. I have never seen 

53 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


on any dance floor two men dancing around together. 
Neither would I have seen two women if there had 
been enough men at that particular dance. 

There are a few things women should know about 
men for their own happiness and welfare. But too 
many women and girls, we fear, think they are hedged 
in behind insuperable barriers that guard their chas¬ 
tity, but do not care one jot or tittle how much temp¬ 
tation and stimulaion they may throw in the face of 
men. The New Jersey Department of Health says: 
“Many girls thoughtlessly stimulate the sex emotions 
of their men friends by careless words, familiar acts, 
and too thin or otherwise conspicuous clothing.” The 
dance is a place where all of these things find full 
play, and withal there is added thereto the bodily 
contact with its insinuating attitudes. Either the aver¬ 
age young woman is densely ignorant of her power to 
stimulate sex emotions in men by the exposure of her 
person to the embrace of the dance, or she is morally 
culpable. This may be said of the way women dress 
for the street, as well as for the ball room. It would 
seem that the modern reckless abandon of woman’s 
attire was marvelously designed to appeal to the sex 
instinct in even the man-passer-by. Every young 
woman surely knows that her breasts are a part of 
her sex anatomy and she should know if she does not 
that their undue exposure to the gaze of men, and 
especially the bodily contact thereof as is experienced 
in dancing will excite the sex nature of man more 
than the exposure of any other part of her person. 
Woman, you cannot recklessly assume your own safe¬ 
ty or the safety of your sisters apart from the safety 
of your brothers. Life is wrapped in an interrelated 
fold. “No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth 
to himself.” There is no salvation for a separate sex. 

The United States Public Health Service says with 
reference to the control of the sex impulse: “The 
problem of sex direction must be solved by men and 
women working together. This comradeship makes it 
clearer that it is a social crime and mockery to have 

54 



THE LIFE OF THE DANCE IS SEX EXCITEMENT 


anything but a single standard of honor for men 
and women. * * * In present day surroundings 

temptations are constantly lurking for the unwary 
and most men face in their early manhood a mighty 
personal struggle.” Why should woman, the handi¬ 
work of God, so design her attire and choose her 
amusements that she excites the loss of self control 
in her self and in her much weaker brother! 

“In your pleasures choose carefully. It is possible 
for you to waltz for hours with one young gentleman 
after another, without a thought of impurity enter¬ 
ing your mind, but it is not probable. And have 
you thought of the possibility that it may not be so 
with your partners? 

“A few months ago, a mother who had gone with 
her nineteen year old son to an afternoon dancing les¬ 
son, said to me next day, ‘some of the young ladies 
were positively immodest, in the manner in which 
they carried themselves in the dance; they literally 
threw themselves into the arms of their partners. I 
spoke to their teacher afterward and asked if she 
could not correct it.’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ I answered her, ‘And there is the danger 
to your son and to the daughters there. Do you 
think it possible for them to dance in that manner 
for hours without impure thoughts themselves’? 

“After such an evening—in private parlors, even— 
young men have confessed that they have left their 
companions at their homes and gone to place# for 
the night where the passion that had been aroused 
in the dance could find gratification. Had you any 
part in this dear girls? You would not have had I 
am sure if you had known the danger. 

“I feel sure you cannot indulge in the round dances' 
and keep your own white-souled purity, or aid your 
companions in keeping theirs. Here there are great 
opportunities given for taking liberties that you 
would not allow elsewhere, and these, often repeated, 
will soon be thought little of, and the next step 
downward will be easier than the first. If so, can 

55 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


you afford to indulge in this questionable amuse¬ 
ment any longer? You have but to say the word and 
it will soon be cried down as unfit for pure-minded 
young people to indulge in. Were it possible for you 
to keep pure yourself, you are leading another astray* 
and by so doing are weakening the barriers against 
the dire evil. 

“Then avoid the round dance. The chief of police 
in New York has declared from his investigations that 
ninety per cent of the fallen women have taken their 
first step downward in the dance, and each succeed¬ 
ing step is hurried on by indulgence in this amuse¬ 
ment.” 

Here are words from Mrs. Emma Drake, M. D., in 
her little book entitled “The Daughter’s Danger,” 
a “Prize paper to girls of sixteen and upwards.’* 
Mrs. Drake’s books, “What a Young Wife Ought to 
Know,” and “What a Woman of Forty Five Ought 
to Know” are circulated all over the world. It would 
be well for the mothers who are turning their noses 
up at the preacher who denounces the dance to look 
around and find some book by some reputable woman 
doctor, with the standing of Mrs. Drake, who gives her 
reasons for supporting the dance, before they send 
their daughters to learn the terpsichorean art! 

Again we ask, if the dance is a health resort, if it 
is a wholesome and cultural recreation producing 
good manners and beauty of form, if it is an intel¬ 
lectual stimulus of the first order, why does it de¬ 
mand the interrelation of both sexes to float it? 
Every one of these things could be secured by the 
sexes dancing separately. No, my friends, when you 
have weighed every argument, you will come away 
with the conclusion which men and women have come 
to from generation to generation, that the dance 
thrives upon the sex impulse, and like all roads lead 
to Rome, all paths that lead hither and thither across 
the dancing floor have their beginning and ending 
in sex excitement. Innocent young women may be 
lured there, and parents may be deluded by the 

56 



THE LIFE OF THE DANCE IS SEX EXCITEMENT 


sophistry of its defenders, but when once they have 
become enamored of its real character the same things 
will hold them, if they remain its devotees, that hold 
the rank and file of the participants. 

We have gone into this phase of the dance that 
women particularly may know its undercurrent, and 
that young men and women alike may know the rea¬ 
sons the dance really thrives. We can scarcely be¬ 
lieve that these very things are hidden from even the 
unsophisticated and the unitiated. We know they 
are not hidden from any man who is big enough to 
carry a gun in defense of his country. Sure, there 
are a few men who will fume and fuss and “cuss” 
the preacher who condemns this idol of their heart, 
just as there are women who will turn up their nose 
and accuse him of invading their personal privileges 
and talking about things in public that ought never 
to be mentioned (except on a dance floor). But col¬ 
lect a bunch of men from any walk of life and put 
the question square to them and they will tell you 
what I am telling you. They know that sex excite¬ 
ment is the life of the dance, and it doesn’t take a 
Methodist preacher to tell them so. 

Furthermore it’s the promiscuous relation of the 
dancers that adds to its attraction and stimulation. 
Of course every girl who dances hasn’t a fiance, 
and every young man who dances hasn’t a marriage 
license in his pocket, but why don’t those who are 
engaged and those who are married dance with their 
sweethearts and their wives or husbands throughout 
the evening! If you girls want to break the dancing 
habit of your fiances, just insist that they never dance 
with anybody else but with you. And you married 
women who are jealous of your husbands demand that 
they dance with no other woman but you from nine 
until one o’clock. This will cure them like a dose 
of “Rough On Rats.” A married man would rather 
saw ice all day in January than dance with his own 
wife after the first round. And we may add, a mar¬ 
ried woman would rather wash dishes all day in 

57 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


July, than dance with her own husband more than 
a set or two. 

Once in a while we run across a man, who like 
the women, denies that sex excitement has anything 
to do with his love of dancing. Now what do you 
men think of that? I have associated with all classes 
of men: I have worked with them in the shops and 
factories and bunked with them in the forecastle of 
cattle boats across the Atlantic, and I think I know 
what I am talking about. I am now talking about 
real men, not dudes or sissies. I haven’t in mind some 
pleasure cloyed, vitiated fop who doesn’t know 
whether he is a man or a woman. Neither am I 
slandering my sex, nor presuming on a doctrine of 
total depravity. I am just speaking facts about red 
blooded men. When a man tells me he can put his 
right arm about a woman’s waist, who is not his 
wife, and go whirling around over the dance floor 
with her hot cheek against his, and her bare arm 
thrown around his neck, with her right hand clasped 
in his, and her breasts locked up against his bosom 
as close as he can press them, with his limbs inter¬ 
twining with the limbs of her sparsely dressed form, 
when he tells me he has no improper thoughts to¬ 
wards her, that his God-given procreative powers are 
not unduly excited, I say to him, I don’t dispute you, 
I don’t question your veracity or your morals, 
(neither do I look to see if he has wings,) I simply 
say, God pity you my friend, you are not a man. 
And of all the creatures on God’s green earth that 
I pity most, it is the creature that wears coat and 
trousers and is classed among the male sex of his 
species, and yet who is not a man. 

Now I could bring to you, but I don’t want to 
discredit your intelligence or insult you, I could 
bring conversation after conversation of men with 
reference to girls they have danced with, corroborat¬ 
ing these very things. I do say this, young women, 
if you knew how the young men talk about you after 
you have been swinging around in their arms on the 

58 




IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIFE 


dancing floor you would blush and never go to a 
dance again. A dancing school is about as much 
value to society as an incipient bawdy house, and the 
dancing master who teaches young girls to allow men 
to take liberties with their person on the dancing 
floor that would make them blush in their own 
mother’s parlor and before their own father and 
brothers is a deluded devotee of Terpsichore and a 
primary teacher in the art of seduction. We pass 
on to our fifth count. The fifth reason why Meth¬ 
odists don’t dance is: 

V. IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIFE: IT UNDER¬ 
MINES OUR SOCIAL MORALITY. 

If what we have said is true, the last leap of the 
dance is over the abyss. Everybody that dances 
doesn’t go to the devil. Neither did everybody that 
drank liquor get drunk, and become an outcast or 
a bum. And those who did become such never ex¬ 
pected to reach tfiat goal. We shudder to think that 
the “innocent” girls and boys of our High Schools 
shall turn out to fie what many of them will inev¬ 
itably become by simply taking the first harmless 
step under the chaperonage of paid moral and in¬ 
tellectual teachers, and take it in our School build¬ 
ings erected and supported by the common taxes of 
the people. But we might as well face the facts. 
“Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth 
unto destruction, and many there be that go in there¬ 
at.” Away back there at the very threshold of life’s 
determining factor was the very step taken that led 
to the dissolute life. Because boys and girls are 
young, is no reason to jump to the conclusion that 
they are safeguarded and indulging in things the 
outcome of which they are assured, by the initiated, 
will be all right. A young girl under sixteen years 
of age, in one of the capitals of a middlewestern state, 
was the occasion for the debauched morals and 
loathsomely diseased condition of not less than two 

59 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


dozen high school boys in a class of which she her¬ 
self was a member. High School teachers in this 
very city have come home after acting as chaperons 
of class dances, saying they were utterly sick over the 
way the boys and girls literally “slopped over” each 
other. 

To quote from Professor Faulkner’s book again: 
“Where did the majority of drunkards take their 
first drink? Let me answer; the first drink of the 
drunkard was just a social glass; the first game of 
the gambler was just a social game; and three fourths 
of the outcasts had a man’s arm around them for the 
first time when they were young girls at a social 
dance. There are in San Francisco 2,500 abandoned 
women. Prof. La Floris says: I can safely say that 
three fourths of these women were led to their down 
fall through the influence of dancing.’ ” After this 
man was converted to God he started out with the 
vehemence of a Life Saver pulling on his oars to 
reach the sinking forms of helpless women ship¬ 
wrecked out at sea. He said: “It is the greatest 
sorrow of my life that I have been so long, and in such 
an influential way connected with an evil which I 
know to have been the ruin both of soul and body, 
of many a bright young life; and if in the hand of 
God I can be the means of leading one fifth as many 
to Christ as I have seen led to a life of vice and 
crime through the influence of the dancing academies 
with which I have been connected, I shall be more 
proud than I have ever been of any previous achieve¬ 
ment.” 

May we hope that God granted to this man the 
desire of his heart. We quote his burning words that 
we ourselves may help wing them to some heart and 
make sure the one fifth saved souls he hoped to win. 
He was wise in hoping to win one fifth as many as 
he had seen lost. It is easier to burn down a whole 
block than it is to build one five room cottage. And 
to start out to overtake the fire you have kindled, after 
it has swept from the green grass of Springtime to 

60 



IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIFE 


the dry leaves of the Autumn forest and the tall 
grass of the open prairie is something that only the 
swift going of the Spirit of God can do. 

It would seem that if all we have said in the fore¬ 
going were true, it would be unnecessary to say any¬ 
thing about how the dance imperils the moral life. 
But it takes a great deal to convince some people. 
It was only after ex-governor Patterson of Tennessee 
saw the fair flower of his own flesh and blood de¬ 
bauched and ruined by drink, that he awakened to 
see the evils of the saloon. This is his own public 
testimony. Thank God for the man who wakes up 
at any hour, if it’s time to snatch somebody else’s 
child from the fire. But thank God most for men 
and women who have never gone to sleep while fire 
brands were being stuck beneath their own and others’ 
dwellings. Abraham Lincoln once said in referring 
to human slavery: “If I saw a snake crawling into 
my house I’d strike it with the first thing I could 
get my hand upon; but if I should see a man at¬ 
tempting to put a whole brood of vipers into the bed 
where my own or somebody else’s children were go¬ 
ing to sleep soon, I’d stop him if it cost me my life.” 

If the dance destroys health, it surely is unmoral 
if it is not immoral. If it is an indecent and vulgar 
thing; and if its life is sex excitement, it cannot be 
other than immoral. This is our contention. Here 
we judge the dance not simply by what it constantly 
tends to become. We judge it by its product. We 
contend that it undermines our social morality by 
violating generally in thought, and often specifically 
in deed, the Seventh commandment as stated and in¬ 
terpreted by Jesus. Hear ye, Him! 

“It has been said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, 
but I say unto you, he that looketh upon a woman 
to lust after her hath committed adultery with her 
already in his heart.” “The Seventh Commandment, 
according to this, may be violated as a man walks 
down the street, or even as he sits in the sanctuary of 
the Most High,” you will say. To be sure it may. 

61 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


Blit positions and habits and amusements that con¬ 
spire to stimulate thought as the dance does, make 
it impossible for the pure to remain pure long. The 
old proverb: “You can’t keep the birds from flying 
over your head, but you can keep them from build¬ 
ing nests in your hair,” is applicable here. Chris¬ 
tians are taught to pray, “Lead us not into tempta¬ 
tion,” and no Christian can pray that prayer 
sincerely and then step into the very mouth of hell 
and expect God Almighty to keep his garments from 
the fire. For you to attempt to do it or for me to at¬ 
tempt to do it would be presumption and blasphemy. 
I confess to you what I believe would be the con¬ 
fession of any red blooded man who will be honest, 
that I would not attempt to assume the attitudes 
taken by men upon the dancing floor without first 
surrendering every modest claim to an unsullied 
character. 

Here is something else for you to ponder. Mar¬ 
ried men and married women may go to any other 
decent and publically sanctioned place alone without 
causing trouble in the domestic relationship, but the 
dance. They can go to the theater, they can go to 
Church, or to concerts, or political meetings, or 
clubs or lodges. They can go where men and women 
meet together and where they meet separately. When 
the saloon was in vogue men could go to the saloon 
every night in the week, if they didn’t come home 
drunk and beat their wives and children, and if they 
supported their families, hundreds of thousands of 
married women had no complaint for divorce and 
lived with their husbands peacefully. But you let 
a married man get to running to the dance regularly 
without his wife, or a married woman get to running 
to dances without her husband, and you will see how 
quick the devil is to pay. Even let a young man who 
is engaged to a girl get to running to dances without 
her, or she without him, and the same thing is true. 

Now why is this? You answer this if you will. 
You know why it is. If you want to stir up trouble 

62 



IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIFE 


between a man and his wife, just let one of them 
get the dance habit alone. I know women in this 
town and in other towns who don’t dance, and their 
husbands do, but they always go and look on. Mrs. 
“too fat” or Mrs. “too slim,” Mr. “big feet” or Mr. 
“wooden leg” always insist on being at the dance to 
see the performance if it must go on. * We also have 
women who love the dance and their husbands do 
not. But if these husbands indulge this “innocent” 
desire of their wives, these wives are never allowed 
to attend dances regularly alone. But in as much as 
it sort of queers a man to go and sit on the side 
line and watch his wife dance with some other man, 
we don’t see many men going to the dance as chaper¬ 
ones for their wives. Either she gives up the dance 
or gives up her husband. This is literally true of 
many women. As a rule, as we have already said, 
married women are more enamored of the dance 
than married men. A man loves the dance when he is 
single but when he gets married he doesn’t care for 
it so much, or any more. Of course this is not true 
of every man, as its interest to him is kept up as we 
have already pointed out by his being able to dance 
with some other man’s wife, but it often happens 
that the dancing habit of young women doesn’t die 
soon, even with the care of home and children. Men 
knowing what the dance is, some times have hard 
work convincing their wives of its evil provoking char¬ 
acter. Some men I know have said to their wives 
who teased them to go, “If you expect me to be true 
to you, don’t urge me to keep up the dance.” 

This is a side light on the dance, I defy any per- 

*A woman who is a member of another Church of the 
city came to hear me preach this sermon. Her husband 
dances, she doesn’t. But she says she always goes along. 
She asked her husband who loves the dance, after she had 
heard my indictment, if he experienced sex excitement while 
dancing. He positively assured her that he did not. She 
proclaimed his testimony as Law and Gospel to her neigh¬ 
bors and is perfectly willing to allow her husband to dance 
if she can always go along. 


63 




FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON'T DANCE 


son to disclaim. My friends, will you sanction a thing 
where a married woman has to chaperone her own 
husband? Will you defend a thing married men will 
not allow the mothers of their children to attend 
alone? What do you think of a social custom that 
has so much suspicion thrown about it even by its 
devotees? The dance has been the direct cause of 
as much domestic infelicity as anything you could 
name, except the saloon. “The foundation for the 
vast amount of domestic misery and domestic crime 
which startles us often in its public outcroppings 
was laid when parents allowed the sacredness of their 
daughters’ persons and purity of their maiden in¬ 
stincts to be rudely shocked by the waltz.” (Howard 
Crosby) 

We are not attempting to solve the age old sex 
problem by the wave of our hand or by any battle 
with words. Yet every age must culture its own 
conscience. The voice of the Church of God, sound¬ 
ing clear and strong, against this social vice, will 
avail nothing if it be but a position read about in 
the history of the Church. The cause that has no 
living voice is a dead cause, whatever that cause may 
be. The hope that Jane Addams holds out in her 
epoch making book dealing with this problem of 
sex is set forth in the title “A New Conscience and 
An Ancient Evil.” But a new conscience never comes 
to society apart from some living conscience that 
speaks in living tones. It is strange to note with the 
development of our conscience along other lines we 
should allow our conscience to become flabby and 
voiceless with respect to the moral peril of the dance. 

When we read pronouncements against the dance 
by practically every great branch of the Church of 
Christ and especially when we read the pronounce¬ 
ment of the Roman Catholic Church assembled in 
Plenary Council at Baltimore, saying: “We warn 
our people against those amusements which may 
easily become to them an occasion of sin, and espe¬ 
cially against the fashionable dances, which as at 

G4 



IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIEE 


present carried on, are revolting to every feeling of 
delicacy and propriety, and are fraught with the 
greatest danger to morals,” we are prone to look 
upon them as we some times look upon their met¬ 
aphysical vagaries. But if there is one thing where 
the Church of the present should hear the voice of 
the past it is in its moral message. Things which 
were immoral yesterday are always immoral today. 
Things which were moral yesterday, may be immoral 
today. That is to say, the history of our social 
morality proves nothing, if it does not prove that we 
are constantly outlawing things, which yesterday 
were considered right, on the grounds of the ad¬ 
vancement and enlightenment of public conscience. 
If things which were immoral and unethical yesterday 
become moral and ethical today, look out for the 
false prophets who call black white and white black. 
The age of Amos and Isaiah has repeated itself. 

When we have novices in the form of community 
welfare workers prating around about the Puritan 
ideals of our fathers and mothers and asking the 
Church to adopt this licentious, public hugging 
match and reform it, we ask for their credentials. A 
young man formerly in religious work said recently 
to one of the young women of this Church, “The 
Church will probably have to adopt the dance as a 
means of self defense.” Adopt that bastard, born 
out of holy wedlock! I’d as soon adopt the devil and 
be done with it. “Oh, you can reform it!” The only 
way you can reform it is like reforming a sheep kill¬ 
ing dog, cut its tail off clear up to its ears.” The 
dance, to say it at once and plainly, is an immoral 
amusement, I mean immoral in itself.” (Wilkinson, 
“The Dance in Modern Society.”) 

Then they say, “It’s all right if properly chap¬ 
eroned.” Listen! the most indecent dance I have 
heard of in this city, and one I didn’t see or report, 
was one where prominent members of the Church 
were the authorized chaperones: and one of these 
chaperones stated in this pulpit, when no one was 

65 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


talking about the dance, and no body was asking for 
any public confession, that the thing got so disgust¬ 
ingly vulgar and loathsome that he went personally 
to the master of ceremonies and had the performers 
stopped in the act. This same person related, as you 
will remember, how a dancing master of the city 
called the attention of a mother to the vulgar way 
her young daughter was dancing at his dancing 
school, by saying to her “what do you think of that?” 
And this mother was so dense, she said in reply, “0, 
I think that’s cute.” Yes, your dance is different from 
the other fellows, because it is properly chaperoned! 
You mean different in that it is better? You insult 
the dancing masters when you say your dance is dif¬ 
ferent from theirs. They are the ones who are yelling 
at the top of their lungs for reform. But the “Muci¬ 
lage Glide” and the swish of silk are so noisy in 
their noiselessness and so enchanting in their disen¬ 
chantment that their voice is not heard. 

Then you will insult the Moose, and the Elks and 
the Masons and Odd Fellows, and the Rail Road 
/Motherhoods, and Plumbers Union and the Elec¬ 
tricians and the “Peter Rabbit Charity Balls” and 
the Eagles, and “The Before Lent” and “The After 
Lent” Church dances etc. etc. etc. If you will take 
a microscope or a blood tester and get a jury of 
high brows or low brows, who can find a single 
species of the dance microbe in the other man’s 
dance that can’t be found in yours, I will throw up 
my hands and never mention the dance again. Ah, 
all dance bacilli are born in sex excitement. The 
difference in dances is not a difference of blood pres¬ 
sure: for high blood pressure is always an attendant 
symptom. It is not a difference of temperature: 
heated blood is always a primary attendant. The 
difference between your dance and the other fellows 
dance is not to be found in a different species of 
microbe. It is a difference in the stages of develop¬ 
ment. Yours may be only incubating, while his 
is hatched out. Just give your High School, Parlor 

66 



IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIFE 


dance time and it will hatch out in the public dance 
hall, or maybe in the brothel. 

“I appeal to the facts of history and to present 
experience to bear me out in the testimony, that this 
amusement always and is now linked in a chain of 
downward and deteriorating causes, and never to up¬ 
ward and more virtuous associations. This of itself 
is sufficient to stamp its moral character with reproba¬ 
tion.—Disguise it as we may by the superficial 
refinements of civilized life, the same principle of 
animal passion lies at the bottom everywhere, and 
the same passions, whatever difference there may be 
in the external expression, are stirred up. The most 
fashionable dancing party, where everything that 
intelligence, wealth, luxury and taste can command 
gives splendor to the scene, has its counterpart. 
This is but the higher and more polished link in a 
chain that reaches down to the dark and dissolute 
scenes enacted in the lowest grades of balls. Indeed, 
these latter are, so to speak, but gross imitations of the 
habits of higher life, changed only to suit the circum¬ 
stances and the society, and appearing more gross and 
destructive because the restraints and securities of 
educated society are unknown.—The fashionable 
dancer and the advocate or apologist for the amuse¬ 
ment give at least indirect countenance to its lower 
and baser manifestations.” (Bishop Clark, “Dan¬ 
cing and The Church.”) 

“The dance is the parent of the decollette costume, 
and virtue dies as the dance thrives. It is not by 
chance that the dance and the brothel have become 
linked. They were born twins, and as such have 
thrived. The daughter of fashion as she goes forth to 
th® charity ball, and the daughter of the factory 
as she goes forth to ape her richer sister and dresses 
for the public dance, may not realize the path to 
which they commit their gliding feet, but the end 
thereof is the arms of the paramour and the liber¬ 
tine, and shame unending. This shocks you. But the 
vice of which we must now write is more shocking 

67 



FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


still. Nothing but plainness of rhetoric will tell the 
story, no matter what the cost to personal feeling or 
delicacy.—Then as a thing unholy and unclean, I 
will face it and cry, ‘Shame, thou procuress of adult¬ 
ery.’ ” Lemmon, “The Eternal Building.” 

We understand that statistics prove nothing, and 
that they are poor dry bones to rattle in the face of a 
congregation, yet from another standpoint statistics 
prove everything, and after all are like the very skel¬ 
etons that keep our flesh from becoming a mere mass 
of heterogeneous material. Furthermore, our subject 
and the factors we deal with are such that they refuse 
to be confined to mathematical calculation. We are 
dealing with spiritual forces. We are grappling with 
those undercurrents which are unseen, yet which are 
the trade currents of all our life and activities. We 
cannot just tell you how many young girls of our city 
have gone wrong through the dance. Moreover, our 
subject is such that we cannot conduct a public clinic 
but if you want an exhibition of specimens we can 
take you to the morgue where the product of the 
dance awaits identification. 

We beg, however, to refer again to Mr. Faulkner’s 
book, “From the Ball Room to Hell”, and quote him 
saying, “The tendency of the dance in its influence to 
lead young women astray stands at the head of the 
list.” He continues: “I have for several months been 
working in a mission in Los Angeles, and where I 
have before seen such causes at work, I have now had 
ample opportunity of seeing the effect; and I have 
heard some of those unfortunate ones cry out in 
bitter anguish, ‘Would to God I had never entered a 
dancing school’. The following were two hundred 
cases of girls who are today inmates of the brothel, 
whom I talked with personally. They were frank to 
answer my question in regard to the direct cause of 
their downfall, and I gathered that these were ruined 

by, 


68 



IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIFE 


Dancing School and Ball Room.163 

Drink given by parents. 20 

Wilful Choice. 10 

Poverty and abuse. 7 


Total.200 


We started out in the beginning to give you five 
reasons why Methodists don’t dance. If these are not 
valid reasons we have given, and if they have not been 
sufficiently supported by the burning words of others 
to convince you, we submit, the whole problem of sex 
in its relation to our social morality, to you must be 
of small moment. I have taken no middle ground. 
If there is any middle ground to take in the dance 
question, it certainly is not to be found between the 
dancers who are hugged up so close together you 
couldn’t get a spatula between them. If you can find 
any middle ground upon which to defend the dance, 
that is your priviledge. But don’t dodge the issue. 
When you defend the dance, talk about the dance, and 
not about some imaginary something that in practice 
does not exist. The dance I have condemned is the 
dance of Janesville and not a dance in the moon. It 
is the dance of modern society,—the sex excitement 
dance, that is robbing woman of her virtue, and men 
of their self-control; that is undermining the health 
of its participants; that is vitiating the moral and 
spiritual life of the community; that is preparing the 
way for the flood gates of immorality to open wide 
and sweep the country with a deluge of low ideals and 
low living.* 

If you want to dance and will dance, I cannot keep 
you from dancing. I know full well that I am throw¬ 
ing myself against the current of the time when I 
stand up here and oppose the dance. But the virtue 
of woman and chastity of men is of more value 
than your estimation of me. I therefore appeal for 

♦See chapter Two, “The Menace of Immortality in Church 
and State.” 


69 










FIVE REASONS WHY METHODISTS DON’T DANCE 


the virtue of woman, for manhood and for the home 
and school and Church, and in behalf of our fair land. 
I am no alarmist. I come to you as a teacher of re¬ 
ligion. I see this thing creeping into the Church. I 
see people trying to put this brood of vipers into the 
very sanctuary of our God. I see religion which is 
always the bulwark of society threatened with this 
creeping moral paralysis. I see the dance, like I have 
seen the cigarette, stealing a march on us during the 
recent war, and since, and if I don’t miss my guess, 
there will be more than one preacher crying out 
against this thing, or it will have us choked so black 
in the face before long, that it will be no use to cry; 
in fact we will have no voice to cry with. 

This is and has been the position of our Church. 
Our birthright has been the emphasis of experimental 
religion, and the separation of ourselves from every 
form of worldliness that militates against the highest 
life of our spirits which have been redeemed by the 
precious blood of Christ. But we have never laid 
claim to being its originators or its sole messengers; 
we have simply claimed our right to be vessels chosen 
of the Most High to bear this Gospel of Scriptural 
Holiness to every nook and corner of our own land 
and to every continent of the earth, and to every 
Island of the Seas. The first rule laid down by the 
Founder of our Church was that Methodists should 
“do no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, ESPE¬ 
CIALLY THAT WHICH IS MOST GENERALLY 
PRACTICED.” Here is a place for us to beg n. May 
God help us to weigh these things in our mind and 
consider them in the light of our vows and our high 
calling. We pray God to help us,—we who are here 
this morning are members of the Church of the Living 
God. There are young men and young women here 
today who hear the call of Christ, but their associates 
in school and in business are going the other way. It 
is hard for them to break with their friends, unless 
they have good reasons. We have tried to give your 


70 



IT IMPERILS THE MORAL LIFE 


boys and girls the reasons why they should break with 
the world and cling to Christ and the Church. 

With this I am done. I could say many other 
things, but if you are not persuaded, if you are still 
enamored, they would be simply adding to your 
discomfiture as have been the things I have already 
said. I hope I have said nothing I should not have 
said, and I surely hope I have said everything I 
should have said. Some of you will go away from 
here and condemn me. This, as I have already said, 
is of small moment. But I ask you to look well to 
your own heart and be assured that you have a moral 
and spiritual reason for the hope that is in you. In 
the white light of Christ’s own presence may we see 
ourselves as He sees us. May this be our prayer for 
Hi s own dear name sake, Amen. 




71 



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